


Sonne

by Rhianona



Series: Immortal Ianto [1]
Category: Doctor Who (1963), Highlander: The Series, Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Immortal!Ianto 'verse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-04
Updated: 2010-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:31:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianona/pseuds/Rhianona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An expansion of Part two of 'Four Times Torchwood Discovers Ianto's an Immortal and One Time They Don't.' You do not need to read that in order to appreciate this.</p><p>During the Battle for Canary Wharf, UNIT workers discover Ianto's Immortality and take him to a 'research lab.' His student watches horrified as they take him away and sets out to gain his rescue. Enter Torchwood-Three. After his rescue and recover, Ianto decides to stay and see if he can help Jack out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [space_monkey52](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=space_monkey52).



> Written for space_monkey52 for her winning bid at the help_haiti auction.
> 
> Warnings: There are depictions of torture disguised as 'medical' research. This is only in the first part and it is not very explicit, at least in my opinion. However, I do want to warn people in case it bothers them. Also, there is temporary character death, but since this is based on the premise that Ianto is an Immortal of the Highlander variety, I don't know if that is really necessary.

"Damn! He's up again!" a soldier snarled. His companion didn't respond beyond raising his pistol and shooting Ianto dead again.

"Wonder where he's from?" a third one mused.

"Don't matter. Dr. McIntyre will be interested in it and that's that. Don't ask questions," the second man instructed before leaning against one of the still-standing walls and lighting a cigarette.

The first soldier crossed his arms and tried to appear as casual and nonchalant as his compatriot. Lise bit her lip to keep from protesting their treatment of her teacher, knowing that if she was going to get him out of this, she needed to have as much information as possible to pass on to those who could help her.

Knowing this didn't make it easier to stay silent. She wanted nothing more than to collapse and have a good cry over a day that had started out so promising only to descend into chaos and heartache and horror. What had seemed a dream job had turned into a nightmare. So many killed by the Ghost Shift and now this: UNIT soldiers picking through the ruins of the Tower searching for objects and artifacts they could use, not really caring for the wounded Torchwood employees they found. Or at least not those who had delved deeper into the Tower's levels.

It sickened her and yet she could do nothing more than remain hidden and shadow this particular group who had found Ianto and observed his return to life. If only she hadn't convinced him to join her in trying to find survivors! He wouldn't have been killed by a falling support beam and then found by the soldiers before she could drag him to safety.

'Pay attention, Lise!' she told herself as she saw the other two members of this particular group return to their fellows.

"We parked the van where you said. We should move it now, before anyone notices we've been missing. I heard that that Captain from Cardiff is here," one of the newcomers warned. It seemed enough impetus for the others to move out and after securing Ianto so that he could not escape should he come back to life again, they moved towards the exit. Lise followed behind them, taking care to remain as hidden as possible from them. Given their actions, she was certain they would have no compunction with killing her if they found her shadowing them.

They left the Tower by a side exit, the van they planned to use as transport hidden by the building's shadow. The chaos that had erupted in the aftermath of the battle only served to aid the subterfuge as no one gave the black van plastered with a UNIT identification a second glance. The squad of soldiers stuffed Ianto into the back and drove away, confident that no one was paying attention to them; the group of people milling about seemed more concerned with trying to locate and medicate the survivors than anything else.

She watched as the van drove away, her hands clenched into fists as they were simply let past the barricade and not even searched. It frightened her that her teacher had just been taken like that; her mind refused to even consider what gruesome tests this so-called 'Doctor McIntyre' would put her teacher through. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to relax. She needed to keep her head and not panic. If she wanted to help Ianto, she needed to get more experienced help and that meant getting to one of their safe houses.

After repeating several of the calming exercises Ianto had drilled into her over the decades, she made her move. The general chaos of trauma respondents and ordinary citizens wondering just had happened in such an ordinary office building like this enabled her to slip past anyone who might want to question why she didn't need medical attention, given the state of her clothes and skin. Drying blood - hers and others - made her skin itch and she wanted nothing more than to take a shower. A luxury she would have to wait to take, she decided as she quickly made her way to the flat she shared with Ianto.

Her luck held in that she saw no one loitering near their flat. Not that she really expected it. She knew the UNIT goons hadn't identified Ianto which meant they hadn't pulled up his records. She, on the other hand, would be listed as missing in action and eventually, presumed killed, once whoever was in charge finished identifying the bodies left behind by the Daleks and Cybermen. Hopefully, no one would bother to check out their flat for another few days.

She planned to be long gone by then.

Despite her desire to linger in the home she and Ianto had made, she quickly changed into clothing that wasn't torn or bloodied, wiped off her skin and grabbed the two emergency bags they had prepared in case they ever had to make a quick exit. Lise had always thought Ianto was being paranoid when he insisted on preparing them, but clearly he had been right.

He usually was. Probably why he had lived for so long.

Trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, Lise hurried away from their flat. She had a lot to do if Ianto was to be rescued before it was too late.

***

'Well damn,' Lise thought to herself as she re-read the politely worded email from a General H. Landry informing her that Dr. Daniel Jackson was currently on an extended mission and would be unable to contact her for the foreseeable future. She had hoped that Daniel could help her but if he was away, she could only assume that the war with Ori had heated up again. It meant she would need to find someone else to help her.

She pulled out the list - helpfully titled as 'People to Contact if Things go FUBAR with Torchwood and/or UNIT' - and tried to decide who on it could provide the best help. It frustrated her, because while the list was all very well and good, it didn't really provide much more than a list of names and contact information. She hadn't met the majority of those named and didn't even know if they knew of her or under which alias Ianto had met them.

Lise thanked God that Ianto had found her when she was newly Immortal and that he had agreed to teach her. He was a terrific instructor; he just never seemed to remember that she couldn't remember every little detail about friends or acquaintances he had mentioned once or perhaps twice in their long association. It meant that in situations such as this, she had to rely on her gut instinct.

Hopefully, she'd choosen correctly.

***

Methos twitched perceptibly before drawing a deep breath and reminding himself that nothing bad was about to happen. It only sort of worked to calm him. Ringing the bell, he fought not to fidget; the person he needed to see saw more than most and he didn't want to start at a disadvantage.

Never mind that just by showing up here and asking for her help, he had already given her the higher ground; he didn't want to show all his cards to her. On the other hand, she might appreciate owing him one less favor. He could never tell with her.

"Adam?" Sarah Jane greeted him with a frown but also a welcoming smile. "I didn't realize you were back in Britain."

"As lovely as ever, my dear Sarah Jane," Methos adapted his Adam persona like a comfortable skin. He slinked into the house, arms stuffed into his jacket and tried to look as unassuming as possible. She just looked at him knowingly, not at all fooled by his casual manner.

"Why are you here?" she asked, watching as he slouched into a chair, his long legs stretched before him and his body sinking into the cushions. "Please, take a seat," she invited, her tone only slightly ironic at his presumption.

He gave her a smile that screamed innocent and gathered his thoughts. "What do you know about Torchwood?"

She frowned, arms crossed as she looked at him. "Enough to know I don't want to get involved with them," she finally answered. "Arrogant bastards who think they're above everyone else," she continued.

"True," he nodded. "Or at least they did. I think they're down to about six active officers in the U.K."

"The Cardiff and Scotland branches?" she asked. It didn't surprise him that she would know that, so he nodded. "What happened at Canary Wharf was…" she shook her head in sadness. "It was terrible, Adam. So many dead! And Cybermen and Daleks were almost unleashed on Earth. That was Torchwood arrogance."

He wanted to ask how she had known about the Daleks - he didn't think they had really gotten outside the Tower, unlike the Cybermen - but he decided the answer likely laid in the same direction as to why he was here.

"That's not why I'm here. Well… not directly, at least. You know UNIT was sent to help with the clean up," Methos hinted. He needed to know how much she knew.

"I had heard," she answered. She looked at him sharply. "Really, Adam. Stop hedging. I can only assume you are here about something that concerns Torchwood and UNIT. What do you need? You know I won't say no."

Methos gave her a small smile. "I never could bluff around you, Sarah Jane," he admitted. "Very well," he straightened in his seat, becoming more commanding, something Adam Pierson rarely showed, but Sarah Jane had managed to ferret a number of secrets out of him when they had met over two decades ago and she knew that he had lived for several centuries. "One of my… compatriots worked for Torchwood. Unfortunately, he revived in front of a UNIT squad, who promptly killed him again and then secreted him to some lab somewhere." He continued to tell her what Lise had related to him and watched with some satisfaction the horrified look in her eye. She would help and Ianto would be saved. At least he hoped so.

And then, he could find out just what had happened to his friend - and how the hell he had known how to contact him.

***

The last thing Sarah Jane expected when she opened her door this afternoon was to see her erstwhile friend, Adam Pierson; of course, he probably no longer went by that name and she really didn't know if she could count him as a friend. Acquaintance certainly, but more than that? Perhaps once, but not since she discovered his secret.

Immortality. She didn't know how old he was, more than a few centuries for certain but she had long ago decided not to push him on that, fearing that he would take action against her did she do so. Convincing him not to disappear after she had actually discovered he couldn't die had taken a great deal of skill and fast talking. After that, she had never brought it up again and in return, Adam hadn't totally disappeared from her life. He had even warned her when he had changed his identity again; a letter from 'Adam' saying he was going abroad for the foreseeable future and he would let her know if he ever returned.

So no, perhaps not a friend but more than an acquaintance.

Frankly, she didn't know what to do with the information he had given to her. She hadn't bothered to ask _where_ he had found out what he had; he wouldn't tell her, even if she pressed. It bothered her though, that UNIT would do something like this; it was something she had come to expect from Torchwood but not UNIT. The Brig would never have allowed it.

It seemed that more than the brass had simply changed at UNIT. It saddened her immeasurably, like something important and precious had fallen to the wayside. A part of her wanted to insist that UNIT was so closely entwined with the Doctor that no one involved would even dream of capturing someone for a remote lab. The more realistic side of Sarah Jane knew that it was a quixotic view.

All of this left her with little choice. She couldn't in good conscience, leave any sentient being to the not-so-tender mercies of experimentation. Time to call in a few favors.

***

Ianto gasped back to life, pain filling his entire being. He moaned as a clinical voice calmly recorded his reactions and vitals. Here, he did not have a name, merely a designation; no better than an animal and certainly not granted any mercy. He had long since ceased attempting to reason with his captors - it brought him nothing.

He clung to the hope that Lise had managed to elude a similar fate. He didn't feel her buzz, so unless they had placed her in a different location, she should have escaped Canary Wharf and the utter destruction that had led to his current predicament.

Sadly, this wasn't the first time he had been tortured for his abilities. And the UNIT scientists and soldiers didn't even come close to the creativity others had inflicted upon him. He wished he could say that humanity changed and evolved but when it came down to it, they really didn't. Oh, different mores held supremacy over others, but humans were inherently selfish and immortality, something they all wanted.

He couldn't remember a time when he _wasn't_ Immortal. Actually, that was a lie. He had vague memories of parents, of falling through the Rift, of the first tribe of people who took care of him. Of dying that first death and being reborn into who he now was - a true Gift from the Gods, proof that the Gods loved and cared for the people.

Time changed the beliefs that defined a group's culture. Ianto was no longer a Gift from the Gods, sent to protect and look over the people. Now, he was an oddity, something to be studied and taken apart, to answer scientific curiosity. He preferred the former - and who could blame him?

"Has he said anything?" one of the so-called scientist's asked of his colleague.

"Nothing, sir," came the reply.

"Pity. It would be so much more helpful if he would answer our questions." As if Ianto would, even if he knew why he was Immortal. But then, they didn't care what he thought; any 'answers' he gave them would simply be brushed aside as untrustworthy.

"Should I put him back in his cell?" one of the attendants inquired.

"Yes, I am done with him for the day. Doctor McCullough wishes to try something new with him tomorrow, so bring him to her lab in the morning."

Ianto tensed as he felt the orderlies near him. One unstrapped him from the gurney on which he lay as the other injected him with a sedative. They all knew he'd metabolize it by the time he got to his cell, but he rather they drug him than kill him during transportation. He didn't bother fighting to get free, knowing from earlier experience how futile it would be. The more he fought, the more they 'experimented' on him.

It didn't take long to be dragged to his cell. The orderlies dumped him on the thin mattress that served as his bed, not bothering to spread the close to thread-bare blanket over his body. The door clanged shut behind them, a quiet electronic beep confirming that it had locked. He waited for the sedative to finish wearing off, blinking blankly at the wall and finding patterns in the brick to occupy his mind. He tried to tell himself it wasn't too bad, that he could handle this - had done so before - and someone would rescue him or he would find a chance to escape.

He didn't really believe that. Not based on what he saw of the others held at this facility. UNIT brass might have complained about Torchwood One policies, but their own weren't much better.

Curling up into himself, he dragged the blanket over his body, desperate for some amount of rest before the torture began again.

***

Lise paced, full of nervous energy as she waited for something - an email, a phone call, even a telegram! - to arrive and relieve her anxiety. She had hardly left the safe house since she had arrived for fear of missing some type of news about Ianto, even going so far as to ask the local shops to deliver her groceries. Unfortunately, the only email she had gotten was from an 'Adam Pierson', who had informed her that he had contacted one of his friends who had agreed to help.

She really wished Daniel wasn't off world somewhere and incommunicado. She knew him best of all Ianto's students and it helped that he actually knew about aliens. None of the others did, so she hadn't bothered to contact them yet. Yes, they could offer her support, but little else and she didn't want to risk them unnecessarily.

At least she hadn't read about a massive power outage yet. It gave her hope that Ianto still lived. She was positive that if he had lost his head, the Quickening power alone would destroy those who had taken him.

Vengeance would be his, but she would rather have her teacher back.

***

Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, affectionately called 'The Brig' despite having retired several years ago, frowned at the papers in front of him. This was an outrage! He could scarcely believe that UNIT had fallen to such lows. In his days, it certainly wouldn't have.

But perhaps, that was the difference; like he, many of the soldiers who had served with the Doctor had retired or died. Far be it for him to deny the Doctor his due: his morals had certainly guided UNIT after its formation but clearly his lessons had not remained with the upper echelons of the organization.

He doubted it was the entirety of the command, but even just the one or two who looked the other way or encouraged such experimentation - people more focused on what aliens and alien technology could give to _them_ instead of protecting Earth and fostering good relations with others of the universe - was dangerous enough. Hadn't they proved it with what they consented to fund in their black projects?

Questions of morality haunted his years as a soldier and he did not like that it continued to do so now that he had retired. He had frustrated the Doctor with his tendency to shoot first rather than try for the peaceful solution, but he had also learned from the Time Lord and eventually curbed his more militaristic tendencies. He had left UNIT in good hands, or so he had supposed and to find it had fallen to such depth caused him despair.

Sadly, his status as a retired officer afforded him little actual leverage. UNIT would not act against their own, not without incentive. And he knew just who to call for help. He just hoped the man's notorious dislike for Torchwood One would not prevent him from aiding one who needed his aid.

***

Ianto lost time after a while, his mind retreating to protect his sanity. He died multiple times a day, all in the name of science and each time that he came back to life, they moved onto a new method of testing the limits and extent of his Immortality. 'Scientific study' they called it, when it was anything but. A part of him wondered how much longer they would continue with their torture, when they would grow tired of not finding any answers.

Perhaps then they would simply lock him up in a cell and ignore him except for the occasional test.

His mind drifted, lost in the past, remembering other occasions when his secret had been found out and he had not evaded capture in time. Or times when he had ended up a prisoner of war and his jailers had seen him simply as an enemy who was unusually hearty. He had survived those occasions and he would survive this one. He hoped.

***

The last thing Jack expected when he answered his phone was to hear the voice of Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart (retired). "Alistair! What a surprise! How is your lovely wife?" he greeted.

"Captain Harkness," the Brig replied in turn. "Doris is well. She sends her best." He seemed to hesitate over the line and Jack leaned back in his chair, wondering what would cause the retired UNIT chief to ring him. UNIT didn't particularly care for Torchwood, even if he ran his branch in a manner completely unlike any of the others.

"I'm sure you realize this isn't a social call, Captain," the Brig finally said. "I… discovered some disturbing information and need your help."

Jack could feel his eyebrows rise in surprise. "And why would UNIT want my help?"

"I'm not asking on behalf of UNIT," the Brig confessed. "This is a… personal matter."

That threw Jack for a turn. What could the Brig want that he couldn't ask his former compatriots? Or perhaps he had already done so, only for them to meet with failure. "Now, why would you come to me?"

"Come now, Jack," the Brig huffed. "Stop being so obtuse. I wouldn't be ringing you unless I felt it necessary."

"Why should Torchwood clean up your mess? I assume it's a mess," Jack countered. Despite the destruction of Torchwood-London – or perhaps _because_ of it, he refused to let UNIT attempt to derail Torchwood's independence. He would protect his people as he saw fit and that meant keeping them away from UNIT. Poor Tosh had already been the subject of the tender mercies of the organization.

"Because, confound it, it is Torchwood business!" the Brig announced. Jack gasped into the receiver; fortunately, the Brig continued with his explanation. "I was contacted by an… associate of mine, who had received viable information that an employee of Torchwood had been found by a UNIT squadron in the ruins of Canary Wharf. Jack, this person… he's like you. He _can't_ die. And UNIT has him squirreled away in a base doing God knows what to him."

"What?" he asked. "But…" He was stunned. He had searched for _decades_ and had never found _anyone_ like himself. It was why he stayed in Cardiff, remaining with Torchwood and just waiting for the Doctor to stop by again so he could get his answers. Who was this man?

"I didn't believe it at first," the Brig continued, "but then I did some digging. What my man found is frightening and disgusting. By Jove, man! UNIT is not supposed to act like this! Unfortunately, no one in the current UNIT administration cares enough to shut down this project. It's regrettable, I'm told but without proof, they're content to ignore the lab and the rumors that surface about it. They don't know what's going on there, just that it's some sort of lab that every so often makes some sort of breakthroughs from which UNIT can reap the rewards."

"Typical," Jack snorted. "And you guys hate Torchwood for the same thing."

"I know, Captain Harkness. Believe me I do. I don't know what the Devil is wrong with them! But there it is. Will you help?"

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose; he was loath to help out UNIT _or_ Torchwood-One, but was it really helping? From what little the Brig had revealed, it seemed that he wouldn't so much be helping UNIT as preventing them from further tarnishing Earth's reputation out among the stars. And could he in good conscience simply leave some poor person – even if he had worked for London – to their tender mercies?

The answer, of course, was no. Perhaps once he would have blithely ignored the information but he had changed. Rose and the Doctor had seen to that and even if they had abandoned him, leaving him without any explanation as to what had happened to him, he could not simply ignore the plights of others when he could help.

"Send me what you have," Jack finally answered. He wanted to know what exactly was going on before he committed his team for a rescue mission.

"Thank you, Jack. I'll send my man directly," the Brig said. "And since the base isn't supposed to exist, if it should… disappear, you'll not hear anything about it. I'll give you the number of a nearby UNIT squad that can take any of the personnel off your hands," He rang off, leaving Jack with a lot to think about.

He was the first to admit that he was, inherently, a selfish man; it was what had made him such a successful conman. He had started working for Torchwood because it provided him with a source of income while allowing him to remain in the same area of the Rift, not because he believed in its mission. He full-heartedly believed that one day the TARDIS would return to refuel and when that happened, he planned to get his answers. It was for that reason and that reason alone that he had fought to remain head of Three when Alex had decided to celebrate the Millennium by killing the rest of his team.

Getting involved in a political upheaval at UNIT was not a good idea. It was something to watch from the sidelines, something of which to take advantage. On the other hand, the very person Alistair had asked him to rescue could very well have the answers he sought. Another part of him, the part that Rose and the Doctor had touched, squirmed with distaste at the idea of leaving someone who apparently couldn't die, in the hands of UNIT scientists intent on dissecting that reason out of him. The organization had certainly tried to "borrow" his services from Torchwood enough times for him to have a good idea of what treatment the poor sod had received.

In the end, it was simple: he wanted answers. He had never met anyone else who couldn't die. He'd be a fool not to find what information he could.

***

It didn't take much to convince Methos to play messenger boy for the Brig. Not that the Brig knew who he was; Sarah Jane had merely mentioned that she knew someone unconnected to everyone involved who could bring the information to Cardiff and Captain Harkness. It had taken longer than Methos had thought to fully investigate the situation and Lise had started growing restless. She was a good kid and he could see why Ianto had decided to teach her. Fortunately, she had yielded to his insistence that she remain hidden and leave the rescue to others. And all his arguments hadn't kept her from following him to Cardiff to keep an eye on the local Torchwood base with him. He didn't know if she realized that while they might physically rescue Ianto, he might not be the same person who had taught her for some many years.

Torture could drive even the kindest of men insane.

He didn't want to get involved, at least not more than he already was. Babying a mad Immortal was not high on his list of favorite activities – there was a reason he had opted to leave MacCleod and his merry band of hanger-ons behind with his persona of Adam Pierson. Couriering the information packet to Torchwood therefore played a dual purpose: (1) he actually made sure it arrived and (2) he could ascertain whether the people affecting the rescue could properly care for Ianto. The last thing he wanted to do was have to spirit a newly liberated Ianto from a new set of captors.

Of course, their luck could change and Daniel Jackson could return from wherever he was hiding and help them. Lise was oddly certain that he could have effectuated a rescue by now with little to no bloodshed and no one else the wiser.

Oddly enough, Methos found himself enjoying the subterfuge of bringing the information to Cardiff. It felt and looked like something out of a classic movie plot, perhaps one of Hitchcock's early thrillers. He was tempted to dress the part, with a well-cut suit, the dark trench coat, and fedora to hide his eyes, but decided it would call too much attention to him, especially since the Brig had sent a Sergeant Benton (retired) with a silver attaché case containing the information. He did have standards… but it was also so very tempting and appealed to his rather wry sense of humor.

In the end, the entire exchange of information was rather anticlimactic. Methos entered the Tourist Office located on Mermaid Quay; a tall man with a classic movie idol profile and looking as if he had stepped outside of the 1940s, waited for him, arms crossed against his chest. According to the dossier Methos had assembled with Lise's help, this should be Captain Jack Harkness.

"Is this it?" he asked.

Methos simply raised an eyebrow as he handed the case over to the other man. "With compliments from our military friend."

"Do you come with?" Harkness leered, angling his body against the counter.

"Not for you," Methos quipped. Perhaps in another situation he would have taken the man up on his offer, but he didn't want to get more involved than he had to – or answer any awkward questions.

"Well, if you change your mind…" he trailed off. "I'll let the Brig know I have the information," he continued, clearly dismissing him. Internally, Methos shrugged; gaining access inside the Torchwood base would have been helpful, but not necessary. Lise had arrived ahead of him and had made herself comfortable on the Plass so as to observe the comings and goings of the team. Methos planned to do the same after he changed his clothes and body language. No need to spook them unnecessarily.

It was almost like they didn't trust Torchwood to properly rescue and care for their wayward Immortal.

***

Jack decided to look over whatever the Brig had sent him before gathering his team. The courier had handed over the briefcase with scarcely any protest and had left as quietly as he had entered. A professional then and he wondered where the Brig had found the man. Too bad he hadn't wanted to indulge in a bit of a dalliance.

His good humor quickly deserted him as he examined the material he found inside. This was barbaric – akin to how Torchwood had first treated him when he had joined. He could still remember the sick pleasure Emily and Alice had derived from "questioning" him and other hapless aliens Torchwood had captured. How could UNIT claim to have the higher moral ground over Torchwood if they hid something like this in their black projects budget?

Inflamed with anger as he read and saw the so-called experiments performed on the poor victim, Jack vowed to get him out. He somehow doubted his team would object, especially if he showed them even just a portion of the file.

They had a lot of work to do if they were going to pull this off. Fortunately, the Brig had provided them with nearly everything they would need to do so successfully. Even more fortuitously, the so-called lab was located just outside Cardiff, something that infuriated him by their boldness. It also explained why they had found nothing at certain Rift alert scenes.

Jack gathered what he needed and called a meeting; he strode from his office, full of confidence that they could do this.

***

The day began like any other. Ianto, by this time, had long since ceased awareness of his surroundings. He woke when the orderlies banged open his door, submitted to their sedation of him, regained awareness upon a gurney, suffered the experiment du jour and died as often as was required, before being returned to his cell. If he was particularly bloody from the day's activities, the orderlies hosed him down. If he did not eat, they forced a tasteless mush down his throat. How civilized the world had become to allow their torture victims rest and food!

How much time had passed since Canary Wharf and his capture? He no longer knew. If Lise had evaded capture, surely she would try to gain his rescue, but Ianto also knew she was very young. He cursed himself for not introducing her to more of his Immortal friends and students, for allowing so many to believe he had lost his head and long ago. One of them, with all their centuries of experience, could have arrived at a plan for ensuring his freedom.

But alas! His penchant for isolation might very well prove his downfall and he despaired of his existence. Despite it all, he wished to live, wanted nothing more than to retreat to one of his estates and forget he had ever learned of Torchwood and their mysteries. Wanted to surround himself with the familiar objects of his past and recover from this outright torture.

And always, always in the back of his mind was the fear that he would lose his sense of self, that he would become again what he most feared. That someone – friend or foe or student – would need to put him down like a rabid dog.

The constant deaths pulled at his strength, each resurrection leaving him weaker than the one before. He wondered if the masters of his condition found that an interesting fact or if they were so lost in their own machinations as to not even notice. On particularly bad days, they didn't even allow him the courtesy to fully revive before killing him once again.

He had no idea that today would be any different from the countless ones before it. The soundproofing in the lab prevented the sounds of battle from reaching those inside so the scientists continued on blithely with their current experience, unaware that they would not live to see the next dawn.

Today's experiment included a vivisection; this particular scientist, a decidedly noxious man that UNIT had discovered languishing in Central America and tormenting various animals and the occasional native, wanted to see if his results varied if the subject remained alive through the process. It meant that he allowed Ianto to heal just enough to keep him from tumbling over the brink of death, all the while examining the various organs laid bare inside his body. His assistant, an equally horrible woman whose past remained shrouded in mystery to all but a select few, carefully made note of all the interesting viscera the other observed and wanted recorded for posterity.

When the door burst open and two people came through, the first looked up with annoyance that turned to fear, while the second dropped her notebook and hurried to a nearby desk where she had secreted a firearm. As for Ianto, he gasped as he was finally allowed to succumb to the siren's call of Angeu.

***

Owen Harper had seen a lot since becoming a doctor. Even before he had joined Torchwood, he had known, at least intellectually, the depths into which humanity could fall. Jack and Torchwood had expanded his horizons but he had mostly conducted autopsies on aliens who had not survived traveling through the Rift for whatever reason. He had treated people savaged by Weevils and Hoix, tended Blowfish who had indulged a little too heavily in the pleasures Earth could afford them, and helped to heal countless others who had arrived on Earth with broken bodies.

As an intern, he had once spent a summer in Africa working with Doctors without Borders. He had seen the savagery humanity could and would visit upon others just because they were different in some way but had not thought to ever see the same sort of thing in his home country. Bad enough the glimpses he had of the alien species freed from their cells, but this, this had the power to break him. He wanted nothing more than to go home, get very drunk and shag someone until he could no longer remember the scene on the table.

Maybe Jack would let him have some Retcon?

Jack and Suzie had taken care of the two responsible for the man currently laid out in such gruesome fashion on a gurney. Medical instruments held open the flaps of skin and muscle of the torso and he felt bile rise as he could see the glistening internal organs of the unfortunate sod on the table. He knew, of course, that the man could not die – and indeed appeared to have – but it didn't make him feel much better as he removed the various metal objects that marred the body.

"Should I sew him up?" he asked Jack, feeling uncertain and needing someone to tell him what to do. Uncharacteristic, yes, but Owen felt so far out of his depth that he craved a higher authority to bless his actions.

He was a bit taken aback by the fierce look on Jack's face and shivered in fear. He did not envy to whomever Jack had assigned blame for this. They would not have an easy time of it. Jack had claimed they were rescuing the guy because he was Torchwood and Torchwood took care of their own, never mind that he was Torchwood-One and Jack had eschewed all contact with that particular branch for as long as Owen had worked for him. Seeing the reality of the situation had only reinforced all of their initial disgust and anger.

"Wait!" Suzie called out, her head almost touching the man's stomach as peered at someone. "Look!" and she had such a tone of astonishment and awe on her face as she stared at something only she could discern. Owen obediently followed the direction of her finger and saw to amazement little blue lightening crackling along the precise surgical marks, the muscle and skin healing as if never touched.

"What the fuck?" he asked, having never seen such a thing in his life. He raised his eyes to meet Jack's and wondered why the other man had such a look of fierce disappointment on his face. So quickly did it flash across his visage that afterwards Owen wondered if he had perhaps imagined it. However, his attention was soon captured by the man on the table who suddenly gasped to life.

His limbs arched against the restraints that held him; he appeared used to such a resurrection since he did not attempt to loosen that which held him. Owen thought he was rather resigned to all that happened to him. He checked his pupils and noticed how dull his eyes were. Snapping his fingers in front of him, he waited for a response. "He's out of it," he commented as the man continued to just lie there.

Suzie quickly unbuckled the restraints and together, they eased the man into a pair of scrubs. "Are we taking him back to the Hub?" she asked. Jack remained quiet and turning, the two found him flipping through the scientists' notes. He had quite a thunderous expression on his face and Owen wondered whether any of those captured by Torchwood would survive to see trial.

"Jack?" he prodded, wanting nothing more than to leave this hellhole.

"He's coming with us," Jack snapped. He stuffed the files into his coat and grabbed the two incapacitated scientists by the back of their shirts. "Let's go," he commanded as he dragged them out of the room. He ignored their protests at being manhandled in such a way, but no one particularly cared.

Together, Owen and Suzie managed to carry the one they had come to save with them to the SUV. They found Tosh already waiting for them, a grim expression on her face that turned to shock when she saw who they carried.

"Where's Jack?" Owen asked.

She shrugged in response. "The UNIT squad that was waiting for our call showed up and Jack is making sure they take charge of the prisoners."

"We're trusting UNIT to clean this shit up?"

"Jack apparently knows the guy in charge," she explained. "He said they would get what they deserve."

Owen exchanged a look of disbelief with Suzie. It didn't seem likely, considering UNIT hadn't exactly leapt at shutting down this facility, but maybe Jack knew something they didn't.

"Let's go," said boss ordered as he strode from the compound, coat flaring dramatically behind him. Like them, he seemed eager to get away from here. Owen trusted that he would tell them what they needed to know. Otherwise, he just wanted to forget about all that he had seen.

***

The Hub's medical ward was located in an inconvenient spot, which was why Owen – and many of the previous medics – had treated his teammates' injuries in the autopsy bay. This preference didn't meant that it wasn't prepped for immediate habitation, just that Owen rarely used it unless he and Suzie wanted to have a quick shag during work hours. Currently, the room held five people; the team and the one they had rescued. He had yet to rouse from the fugue into which he had fallen and Owen could only make an educated guess as to when he might wake.

"He's been stuck at that facility for close to three months," he tried to explain. "If even half of what we saw today occurred to him on a daily basis, well… he likely shut down to avoid his reality."

"Will he ever recover?" Tosh asked, biting her lip as she looked with pity on the man that lay resting underneath the sheet.

"Physically he already has," Owen admitted. "Mentally? Your guess is as good as mine."

"I don't want him left alone," Jack ordered. "Until he wakes, we won't know if he'll pose a threat and I don't want him running around the Hub unsupervised."

"I'll stay for now," Owen found himself volunteering. He didn't really know what drew him to the other, just that something about him did.

"Thanks, Owen. Tosh? I want to know everything you can find out our Torchwood London friend here," Jack said.

She nodded and scurried off to do as he had said. Suzie met his gaze with a sardonic grin and sauntered out after her. "I'll start cataloging the tech we found," she called out as she left Jack and Owen alone with the stranger.

Jack nodded absently and resumed staring at the man. "He looks so young," he murmured. "Any idea of how old he is?"

Owen shook his head. "His body seems to reset itself to this default state whenever it gets injured. He should have scars on his stomach from the… from what we interrupted." He took a calm and steadying breath and continued. "There's nothing. His skin is smooth."

"No scars?" Jack asked, eyes hooded with an emotion Owen couldn't read.

"He has a few, but they're odd. He gently pulled the sheet down to the man's waist and rolled him over slightly to show Jack what he meant. "Here, and here," he pointed to the oddly shaped scars. "They look like something punctured him through there. I took some blood, so we'll see what antibodies he has, but…" he shrugged, feeling helpless. "He could be hundreds of years old and we won't know until he wakes."

"Let me know if he wakes," Jack finally said, and clasped his shoulder before leaving. Owen smiled faintly before returning his attention to his patient. He had no idea what they were going to do. What if he awoke violent? They had already seen him come back to life – would Jack decide to keep him locked up forever? What sort of life was that?

"I hope for your sake you don't," he muttered before turning his attention to filling out the chart he had prepared for him. He found it strangely soothing to have such a mundane task on which to fall back after the horrifying labs he had seen during the raid: a nice slice of normal in an otherwise crazy day.


	2. Part 2

"What do we have?" Jack opened the meeting. His team was huddled in the front part of the infirmary, not wanting to leave their guest unwatched in case he woke.

Tosh used the ward's computer to bring up the information she had gathered. "Ianto Jones, age 23, formerly of Newport, Wales. Began working for Torchwood-London a little over two years ago. Lived with a Lisa Hallet, age 25, of London. They were recruited at the same time. He worked as a junior researcher in the Archives. She was on the engineering team." A snapshot of the two filled the screen, showing a happy Ianto and Lisa leaning into each other at some outdoor event.

"Where's she?" Jack asked.

"Missing, presumed dead. Her body wasn't found at Canary Wharf," Tosh answered. "Now, here's the interesting thing. My search got a hit on one of our files."

"What? You mean Three? Not One?" Suzie asked sharply.    
"Exactly. I thought it was odd, so I looked for the file. In an incident in 1989, the field team responded to a Rift alert in Bute Park. When they arrived, they found a family of three that insisted a 'golden light had snatched right up their boy,'" she quoted. "One Ianto Jones, age six. The team ended up Retconning the family into believe the boy had been killed in a hit-and-run."

"Wait… You think that boy is the same as him?" Owen asked.

She shrugged. "It's as good a theory as any. I cross referenced his personal information with the information on the boy and it matches: same birth certificate, same national i.d. number."

"What's to say he didn't just adopt the identity?" Suzie pointed out.

"It would explain his… condition," Tosh insisted. "We don't really know what the Rift does to humans. What if it made him unable to die?"

"We've had humans and aliens come through the Rift before and they've been injured and died. What makes him different?" Owen asked.

"I don't know! It's just a theory," Tosh said. "If he and the little boy are the same, then the Rift took him somewhere. Torchwood looked for him for a while before giving up on it. They never found a trace of him."

Jack stopped any further conversation before Owen or Suzie could continue questioning Tosh. "She's right. We don't know enough about the Rift to know for certain that it didn't change Jones in some way. But you're also right in that we don't know for certain whether the man lying in the bed over there is that little boy. That's going to have to wait until he wakes." He paused, his mind turning over the information Tosh had given to them. He would have to check the report that she had found but he knew he probably had gone out for the alert. He had just returned to Cardiff after a year spent in Scotland and helping out Archie.

"Owen, do you have any idea as to when he'll wake?" he finally asked.

"His body healed the physical injuries, but since we don't know how he did that, I can only guess as to why he's still unconscious. His body could have decided that it needed to recuperate the energy that it used to heal him. Or, his body could have shut down to give him time to deal with what happened to him. Frankly Jack, I have no idea what I'm working with here." Owen looked affronted and sent a sneer towards the sleeping body.

"Alright. We'll assume he'll wake up soon. When he does, let the Brig know so he can pass the message on to whomever first discovered Jones' captivity," Jack ordered. "We'll see what Jones has to say when he wakes."

It wasn't the best solution to be had; in fact Jack really didn't like it. He wanted answers to his own condition though and it looked like this guy had them. He had never heard of the Rift changing someone like that though but it seemed the most viable explanation.

Except… Jack hadn't traveled through the Rift before gaining his immortality - only directly afterwards. And he had never heard of any Time Agent who had become Immortal because of it either.

Jack wanted to believe that he would let Mr. Jones go, let him live his life - and his next, and his next, and his next unto infinite - but he didn't know if he had the strength to do so. He had to believe the other man held the answers, that he knew why Jack couldn't die because anything else was unfathomable.

Torchwood brought him to this point - brought both of them and he wondered just what type of man the Immortal was. Did Yvonne know what she had within her ranks? Did she seek to learn the secrets of Immortality as Alice and Emily had once tried with him?

He wanted answers - needed and craved them - and the only person who could provide them remained stubbornly unconscious.

***

For the first time in longer than he could remember, Ianto woke comfortable. He had an actual mattress beneath his back and actual sheets on the bed, with a blanket to cover him. He even felt some sort of clothing on his body, though given the temperature of the room, it only served as a means of covering his nudity than providing any sort of warmth. He had no idea where he was but suspected he was no longer the guest of his captors.

He was far too old, too cynical, too _experienced_ to believe that it meant he had found safety. It was just a question of whether this prison would be better than his previous one.

So thinking, he gave into the inevitable and opened his eyes, revealing a white ceiling with soft light shining down. The sudden brightness caused him to wince and he blinked tears out of eyes accustomed to darkness.

"You're awake!" a nasally voice with a London accent said. Ianto didn't have to move as the person moved into his personal space and began to examine him in a clinical fashion - not the same as those who had captured him, more like a doctor. The man wore a white lab coat and had a stethoscope around his neck, providing more evidence of his profession.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Jones?" he asked.

Ianto wondered how to respond. He had spent an untold amount of time tortured before ending up wherever he had. And while the man examining him seemed not to want to cause him harm, he had no guarantee that such a situation would continue. Perhaps his rescuers? captors? chose to play a more vicious game, letting him recover only to visit upon him worse horrors.

In the end, he settled for a half-hearted shrug. It seemed to satisfy the doctor as he merely hummed before marking something in his chart.

"Well then, if you're up to it, my boss would like to ask you some questions." Again, Ianto shrugged. He didn't see how much of a choice he had and he craved information about his situation.

Again, the doctor took his silence and shrug as an answer and he sighed. "Right then. I'll just go and get Jack."

Ianto tried to dredge up some curiosity as to his situation but found it rather difficult to do so. He just flat out didn't _care_

***

Owen hurried to tell Jack that their guest had awakened. And as the older man rushed past him, he skulked back into the autopsy bay, not wanting to get between his Captain and their guest. A part of him knew that he should be there, if only to ensure the other bloke's safety, but a larger part of him didn't want to get involved. Jack was his Captain and he had to trust that his desire to know what made the other immortal wouldn't trump his humanity.

"And what did our guest have to say?" Suzie drawled and stopping him before he made his destination. She met his gaze over her glasses as she fussed around with the metal gauntlet they had found in the Bay not long ago.

"Not a word," Owen admitted. "Not sure what he remembers, to be honest."

"He'll speak to Jack," Suzie commented darkly. "I've seen Jack when he's feeling ruthless and it's not a pretty sight." She tried to conceal the shiver of delight her memory brought her but didn't quite succeed. Owen knew that the darkness that lay within Jack - the darkness he tried not to acknowledge - drew her to him like a moth to a flame.

"Let's see if Tosh can pull up the CTV," Suzie suggested. "I want to know what happens."

Owen shrugged and followed. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do.

***

It took only a glance for Jack to realize that interrogating their guest would have to wait. The man, Ianto Jones - or whatever he chose to call himself - looked done in, a feeling that made sense given his experiences with UNIT and their so-called 'Research Laboratory.' While he wanted nothing more than to demand answers for his supposed and apparent Immortality, the twinge of conscience that assaulted him upon looking into the wary and bruised blue eyes of the man before him prevented him from doing so.

Perhaps he still held that trace of humanity that Rose and the Doctor had brought out in him before abandoning him on that space station. He had thought Emily and Alice and all his subsequent keepers up until Alex had strangled it out of him for all that he tried to keep his Torchwood different than the main branches. For so many years - decades really, he had sought the answer for what had happened to him and now that someone could possibly give to him the answer, he backed off. _Just for a little while,_ he told himself. _Just until he's more stable._

"How are you feeling?" he asked, his tone gentle as if he were speaking to a crazed animal.

"Fine, I suppose," Ianto answered. He had yet to lose the air of wariness that told of his unwillingness to believe his rescue had been effectuated out of any sense of morality.

"One of my people has prepared a room for you, now that you're awake," Jack told him.

"A room? Or a prison?" Bitterness there and Jack shoved the sympathy he felt down.

"A room. You are not a prisoner, Mr. Jones." He smiled, white teeth flashing and oozing confidence.

"Can I leave this place?" Ianto challenged.

And that was the rub: Jack didn't want to let him go, not just because he didn't trust UNIT not to have completely cleaned their house and thus searching for the very man before him, but also because of the possible answers for Jack that he might have. He let his silence tell Ianto the truth.

"Of course," Ianto finally replied, bitterness coating each word. "Well then, take me to my new cell. I imagine you will want to interrogate me as soon as I'm cleaned up."

Inclining his head, Jack found he had nothing by which to reassure the other man that he meant no harm, that this Torchwood would not torture him in a vain attempt to discover the secrets he held within him.

After all, in this same position, he had merely endured. He might pretend that he could leave Torchwood whenever he wanted, but her shackles bound him tight to her and he always returned.

***

The room to which Harkness led him did not resemble the prison cell he had occupied these last months. A point in their favor although Ianto did not necessarily believe that this group of people meant him no harm. It had taken him some moments after Captain Harkness had left him to remember any and all information he had on his new… hosts. Yvonne had hated Torchwood Three and the man who had charge of it, mostly because she hadn't had any control over him. Harkness had done as he had pleased and refused to allow her or anyone else to gain a foothold in what he believed was his territory. Admirable traits to be certain, especially given how well Yvonne's tenure as Director of the Institute had ended.

This didn't actually reassure Ianto, however, because it meant Harkness did not necessarily trust him simply because he came from Yvonne's Torchwood. More than that, the Cardiff branch had a small crew, all of whom owed their loyalty to the Captain first and everyone else second.

All of this meant that his options for freedom - a circumstance he greatly desired - were severely limited. He didn't see Captain Harkness simply letting him walk free from his control. His abilities were too exotic or tempting or however else one might describe it, to let him go on his way without some sort of monitoring. It was not enough that he had endured torture such as he hadn't in decades, but now he could not simply disappear without causing some sort of incident.

He really should have told Lise 'no' when she had suggested they join Torchwood.

A cursory glance around the room to which he had been assigned showed one designed for comfort; the cynical part of him - the part that had helped him to survive as long as he had - wondered if they thought to gild his cage to keep him from bemoaning his continued captivity. A bed that held an actual mattress and several pillows, all of which seemed to invite one to sink into them, to lay one's head down in rest, dominated the room. The wardrobe held a selection of clothing, none to his tastes as Ianto Jones, but certainly nothing horrendous. A small toilet area abutted the sole room but since it contained a shower, he considered himself lucky. Toiletries stood neatly wrapped on a table next to several towels.

Ianto took the hint and availed himself of the means to clean himself. While he wanted nothing more than to relax under the pounding stream of water, he didn't want someone to interrupt his ablutions. From past experiences, he knew that scrubbing himself till he bled in an attempt to wash clean all that had happened to his body did little. Perhaps, had he woken in one of his homes or with someone he trusted, he would have done just that. However, he hadn't and he wasn't and he still felt worn and torn around the edges. The sooner he showered, the sooner he could place clean clothes on himself and find out just what Torchwood Three expected of him.

Somehow, he doubted they would allow him to just walk away. He wasn't lucky enough for that.

***

He cleaned up well, Suzie could give him that. Jack certainly approved, if his leering look and flirtatious behavior meant anything. She knew him well enough by now to identify when he flirted for information versus getting someone into his bed. Or both, as was the present case.

Not that he was having much luck. Mr. Jones seemed uncommonly… frigid wasn't the right word so that wasn't it. Perhaps wary would describe him the best. She couldn't blame him, if the limited view she had had of his treatment at UNIT's hands indicated anything. Locking him up, even if it was ostensibly in 'guest quarters' did not help matters. But Jack wouldn't listen to her and she didn't really care enough to fight it.

Why Jack wanted all of them to sit in on this, Suzie didn't quite know. It wasn't as if he let them ask any questions. She also doubted he would listen to any of their objections afterwards. It seemed an utter waste of time to her; she had things she would rather be doing, such as examining the strange gauntlet they had found in Cardiff Bay earlier in the week.

Jack didn't seem to care about any of that however, so she forced herself to pay attention. She didn't believe Jones would actually tell them anything useful. His ability to come back to life was certainly interesting but ultimately useless. She hadn't discovered anything interesting in the reports they had taken from UNIT and if they hadn't figured out how he managed his trick in the three months they had had him, she didn't think they would have much more luck, never mind Jack wouldn't let them experiment on him.

Jones, for his part, didn't seem to know much of anything. Careful questioning revealed only a cursory memory of Canary Wharf and his capture by UNIT. That might be considered a blessing in disguise; Suzie had considered asking Jack to retcon her memories of the Tower after she had participated in recovery operations. He mostly remembered pain and deprivation whilst under the care of UNIT, which was understandable given how they had found him. Not very useful at all.

***

When it came down to it, not many people impressed Jack. Earth in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries just didn't have the _excitement_ the future had. He had at first, enjoyed living here but as the years turned into decades he had grown tired of seeing the same sort of thing day in and day out. All that truly changed were the faces.

It made this all the more exciting for him: Ianto Jones intrigued him and not just because of his inability to stay dead or his attractive looks. No, it was more than that. Few people truly understood the give and take of interrogation but it looked as if he did. He couldn't wait to unravel his mystery, to figure out what made him tick and what lay under the calm exterior he presented to everyone. A small part of Jack worried that Jones would prove a threat to his people; torture could break and irrevocably change even the strongest of people and he had no idea what type of person he had before him. The personnel file Tosh had found in the Torchwood database didn't tell him much. Plus, he had no way of knowing how much of the file was true, given Jones' inability to die.

"Where are you from?" Jack asked. The abrupt switch from discussing UNIT's activities and Canary Wharf didn't seem to throw Jones off.

"Outside of Cardiff," he replied with practiced ease, his vowels rolling with a bit of a Welsh lilt.

"You practice that?" Jack wanted to know. "Gotta say, love hearing those Welsh vowels of yours. How long did it take you to learn how to do that?"

A raised eyebrow was his only response.

"See, we found a record of a Ianto Jones. Born to a family right outside of Cardiff, like you said. Even has your birthdate - August 19, 1983. What we don't have is any record of that Ianto Jones after the age of six. That is, until you joined Torchwood London. Why do you suppose that is?"

Jack leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and felt smug. Ianto Jones just looked at him impassively.

"You seem to have the answers, Captain. I am sure you have some sort of idea," he finally said.

"Is that so? Why would you say that?"

"You clearly think you know something. Far be it for me to ruin your guess," Jones replied.

Jack couldn't help the bark of laughter that emerged. Despite all that he had been through, Ianto Jones still possessed a sense of humor. Or maybe he just liked challenging authorities.

"Do you know why you can't die?" Jack tried.

"Are you sure I can't?" Jones countered.

Owen snorted in derision, reminding Jack that they weren't alone. He threw a frown towards his doctor and leaned back in his chair. "We've got reports you can't. Whatever else happened to you in those UNIT labs, you went in there unable to die."

"Perhaps I just have a superior healing ability," Jones offered. "No?" he said with a raised eyebrow at the various looks of disbelief. "Perhaps you're right," he conceded. "I don't know why I can't die. Just that I woke back up the first time I died."

"And that was when?" Jack asked.

He got a shrug in reply. "A while ago."

"Did Torchwood know?"

"Captain Harkness, whatever else we might disagree on, I'm sure we both know that if One had any idea that I couldn't die, I would not have been an employee," Jones snapped. "Are we done here?"

"What's the matter, Jones? Am I hitting a little too close to the bone?" Jack pushed.

"No, Captain Harkness," and Jack could almost feel the ice that practically dripped from his tongue. "I am tired and would like to sleep. Or am I prisoner and not allowed such comforts?"

An uncomfortable silence filled the room; while his agents had kept quiet whilst he had questioned Jones, he couldn't keep this up for long before someone would protest.

He nodded, conceding the game to Jones. "Of course not. Tosh will bring you something to eat."

"That would be appreciated," Jones said. He seemed to be debating something; it intrigued Jack because the other man had done nothing but answer the questions Jack had posed to him. He never offered more than asked, refused to say anything too personal or revealing and hadn't even complained about the hunger he must feel since he hadn't been fed before being brought to the conference room. Given all that, Jack had assumed he wouldn't do anything that would make him vulnerable.

Thus he was completely surprised when Jones actually spoke. "Do you know what happened to Lisa Hallet?"

It took a moment for Jack to place the name. "I'm sorry. She's listed as missing, presumed dead," he finally said as he remembered where he had heard the name. Tosh had discovered Jones had lived with her in London.

"Oh," Jones replied. He quickly masked whatever emotion he felt, frustrating Jack to no end as he wanted to know more about what made the other man tick.

He couldn't keep him in the conference room any longer so jerked his head to allow Tosh to bring him back to his room. He had a lot to think about when it came to all he had learned - or rather hadn't - this afternoon.

***

"Is the room to your satisfaction?" Tosh softly asked as she escorted Mr. Jones to his room.

"It's fine," he answered, seeming distracted. She couldn't blame him; he had just woken to a completely new set of circumstances and for all that they had taken him from the disgusting cell and experimentation of UNIT's finest, they hadn't exactly gifted him with anything much better. Clothes, an actual bed and toilet, reading material, and privacy - all of that was far better than what he had before but it was freedom.

She didn't know if the others understood the difference; the only reason she did was because of her own experience with UNIT. "What would you like to eat? I can order it for you. And if you want anything, let me know."

He shoved a hand through his hair and looked distracted before he gave her a small, polite smile. "Whatever is easiest. I eat almost anything." She nodded and left him to place the order.

It was easy for her to feel a connection with their guest. Her colleagues didn't sympathize as much as she did but she could understand that. Owen looked at Jones from a clinical view; Suzie from an analytical one; and Jack's interest just confused her. The Captain both seemed to sympathize with Jones but at the same, he wanted to know why he couldn't die.

How awful must it be for Jones? To have survived Canary Wharf only to be captured and experimented on by madmen masquerading as scientists? To know that the vast majority of people you knew and worked with had died? And now, to be in safety but still in someone else's care? Tosh didn't - couldn't - pretend that Jack would just let Jones go. He was far too interested in the other man, searching for answers to questions he alone knew. And for all that the guest quarters he had made Tosh create were comfortable, they were still a gilded cage.

How soon before Jones truly objected to Torchwood's care and insist on his freedom? And at what price would it come?

***

"Why hasn't he contacted us?" Lise asked. Methos lounged on the hotel's bed and watched as the younger woman paced back and forth, agitated at the lack of word from her teacher. "Your friend said that Torchwood rescued him. He should have gotten in touch with me by now!"

"Patience, Lise!" Methos admonished. "Think for a moment. He still lives - we would know if he did not. There must be a reason for his silence."

"Right, of course. You're right. I'm overreacting." She wiped her hands against her denims, before taking a seat on the other bed.

"Good. Now then, let's look at this logically," he urged. "We don't know in what condition they found him. He might be unconscious. Torchwood might have simply placed him in their cells. He might not be able to get us a message." He ticked off each point with his finger.

"None of that is very comforting," she pointed out.

"Ah… but we have a secret weapon," he countered. "We are waiting to hear from him. Torchwood can't keep him forever; they will need to let him go or at least let him speak to someone because otherwise, we're going to start pushing for that."

"Right," she nodded. "Right." She gave him a grimaced smile. "I… I just want him back. I want to know my teacher is fine, that…" She trailed off. She tended to do that, Methos had discovered, especially when she felt guilty.

"Joining Torchwood wasn't only your decision," he told her. "He could have done something else, posed as your roommate or boyfriend to explain why he lived with you. Ianto made the decision to work there."

"He wouldn't have if not for me," she insisted. "I know he's an adult - he's my teacher not my student. But he takes his responsibilities so seriously and he doesn't think I'm ready to go on my own yet."

"How long have you been with him?"

"Since I first died - a little over a hundred years ago."

"That long?" Methos couldn't help but feel surprised. Most teachers let their Immortal students go free after a decade of instruction.

"You know Ianto," Lise said with a shrug. "He wants to make sure his students can survive everything. I think… I think he was about ready to let me go. He's made noises, but… I didn't want to lose him."

"He always keeps track of those he cares for," Methos said. "Even if you don't know it." After all, the other Immortal had kept track of _his_ various aliases and that wasn't easy: he should know given how hard he worked to keep his identity hidden.

"I know," she replied, a soft and sad smile on her face. "But it won't be the same."

"Life is about change. If you can't manage that…" he broke off but his look got his point across. Any Immortal who couldn't - wouldn't - change with the times didn't keep his or her head for long, no matter their training.

"Right. And Ianto would take my head for saying something like that," she acknowledged.

"It is more difficult to live now, to be Immortal in this time than it used to be," Methos said, trying to parse his words carefully to get his meaning across without betraying who he was. Lise knew he was older than she, but not his true name - and he wanted to keep it that way.

"What do you mean?" Curiosity fairly radiated from her person and Methos shifted on the bed to get more comfortable. It had been a while since he had to give this type of talk - not since his last student and that had been long before the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

As he settled in to lecture Lise on how this time period differed from earlier ones and why life was more difficult, he mentally scolded his erstwhile friend for not covering this himself. It was just like the other man to make his life so tedious.

Gods! Why did he put up with friends like this?

***

"Captain Harkness, please," the Brig politely asked as someone answered the phone. A shuffle of noise and then the receiver was handed to the proper person. "Ah, Captain, so good of you to take my call."

"What can I do for you?" Harkness asked, sounding wary. A part of the Brig conceded his right to feel that way, but then last time he had phoned, he had asked for a big favor.

"How's Mr. Jones doing?" Sarah Jane had contacted him with concerns from whomever had alerted her to the unpleasant situation with UNIT and their lab.

"He's fine. Adjusting," Harkness answered.

"Good to hear, Captain," the Brig replied. At least that meant he could pass the good news on to Sarah Jane and then to whomever had begun this whole thing. "Tell him to get in touch with some of his friends."

"Oh… ah," Harkness paused.

"You haven't got him locked away somewhere, have you Captain?" the Brig asked sternly. "He isn't a prisoner."

"I know!" Harkness answered, sounding defensive.

"Good. Then you shouldn't have a problem with letting him do as he wants. He's not a threat," the Brig reminded Harkness. "He's the victim here, Captain."

"He's Torchwood."

"Is he? Does he still want to be?"

"Tell your friends he'll contact them," Harkness instructed before hanging up. The Brig just shook his head at it all. He just wanted all of this unpleasantness over and done. He was retired for God's sake! He shouldn't have to deal with such recalcitrant people anymore!

***

The first time Captain Harkness gave Ianto access to a computer, he sent an email to Lise telling her he was fine and she should move onto her new life. Not in so many words, of course, and not to 'Lisa Hallet' since that identity had been killed, but nonetheless, Ianto didn't want his student - and anyone else she had recruited to help her - to put herself into anymore danger than she already had.

Of course, he had given it even odds that she would ignore his instructions and wait until she had actually _seen_ him before moving on with her life, but he hoped whoever was with her would convince her successfully.

Hence, his second email went to Daniel with a request to get Lise involved with the Stargate program, though again, he hadn't written that in so many words. He had no idea if Daniel was even around to comply with his request, but Ianto knew his older student would look after her. Besides, Lise would like the work at the SGC better than what she had done at Torchwood.

All of that accomplished, Ianto began to force himself to deal with what had happened to him. He knew that he couldn't convince the Captain to let him walk free, not yet at least, not until he could function without jumping at odd noises or hurting anyone who came upon him when he was unawares.

Torture was such a bitch to get rid of.

As nice as the Hub - as her workers named it - was, especially in comparison to the cells in which UNIT had kept him, it was underground and he missed the sun and other people. While the four agents that made up this outpost of Torchwood were nice enough, they didn't have the time for him and he was spending too much time alone.

To be fair, Toshiko did - or at least she made time when she could. She had taken to bringing him a little something each day (or when time permitted, given Rift activity had kept the small team jumping around and busy for hours on end) or sitting and speaking with him about his experiences. To his relief, she never pushed to know about his supposed immortality or how long he had lived. Instead, they spoke about what he had done in Torchwood London or about the books she had brought him to read or, very occasionally, the work she was doing.

The doctor and second-in-command both couldn't care less about him unless he impacted their life. Doctor Harper, once he had seen that Ianto had healed from the physical wounds done to him by the UNIT scientists had signed off on him. "I'm not a bloody shrink!" he had snapped at Captain Harkness when he had suggested Owen talk to Ianto about what had happened to him. And Suzie was more interested in the alien technology she was studying. As long as Ianto stayed out of her way she was content.

Captain Harkness, on the other hand, was very interested in Ianto. Too interested for his tastes. He kept asking about his immortality, leading him to believe the Captain had a personal interest, one he didn't want his subordinates to know about. So instead, he tried to figure out how old Ianto was and how he had become Immortal and generally made himself an annoyance. More than once in recent days, Ianto had left the room rather than be questioned by the other man.

None of that changed the fact that Ianto was bored. Yes, he had his own problems with which to deal, and yes, he could use the computer Toshiko had given to him to surf the internet, but he couldn't do anything important because then the Captain would come and ask more questions.

He knew it was only a matter of days before he gave into his boredom and entertained the Captain and his strange questions. Maybe if he did, he would be allowed a larger measure of freedom than he already was. Even if one of the other agents must accompany him to the outside, he knew he would leap at the opportunity. He missed the sky and the sun, the rain on his face, the smell of the sea.

Captivity, no matter how banal, did not suit him.

***

"Where are you heading?" Methos asked, leaning against the door jamb of the bathroom. His companion finished throwing her clothes into her carryall and huffed as she tried to fit everything inside it.

"America," she finally answered. "No word yet from Daniel, but… I can't stay here much longer, not if Torchwood thinks I'm dead."

"You've been lucky," he commented.

"Not really. They've not had cause to look for me here. Still, there's no reason to push it. Now that Ianto told me he's fine, there's no reason for me to remain in Cardiff."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "You seem rather anxious to leave all of a sudden. I would think you'd want to see for yourself that he's okay."

She sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You were right," she finally said with a small smile. "I've been lucky… Ianto's kept me with him far longer than most other teachers would have. It's time for me to see if I can stand on my own and with this… it seems the right time to do it. Besides, if I stay around here and Ianto finds out, he's just going to worry about me instead of focusing on himself."

"You're brighter than I thought," Methos complimented. He liked that Lise had decided to move on without an extra nudge from anyone else.

"We all have to grow up sometime, right?" Lise gave him a toothy grin. "Now then, I think that's that." She swung on her trench coat, her sword in the lining and turned towards him. "Thank you. Seriously. I don't know what I would have done without you. So thank you."

He nodded in reply. Not much else he could say without it going maudlin. "Drop me a line to let me know you still live every so often." It was the least he could do, both for the young Immortal who he had grown to like despite himself and for Ianto.

"Thanks again. See you around," and with that, Lise exited the room and left Methos to his thoughts. He should really follow Lise and head home. No need to remain in Cardiff, not if Ianto seemed to have things in hand. It just… it still felt unfinished. His curiosity needed further satisfying but did he dare remain here and risk further exposure?

"Decisions, decisions," he muttered in the empty room.


	3. Part 3

"When can I leave?" Ianto interrupted Jack from his paperwork. On the one hand, Jack appreciated it - he hated his administrative duties. On the other hand, he didn't have a particular desire to let the other man outside his supervision.

"Don't you like it here?" he asked instead.

Ianto just gave him a pointed look, before surveying the Hub with a jaundiced eye. "Such lovely surroundings." His tone belied his statement; Jack could appreciate the amount of derision laced within the comment.

"It's still a risk," he said.

"From UNIT? Or me?" It impressed Jack that the other man would even count himself.

"They could still come after you," he put forth.

"Right," Ianto snorted and moved into Jack's office proper, taking a seat without asking. "You assured Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart _and_ me that the conspirators had all been taken care of. Are you saying that's not true?"

"Between us and UNIT, we picked up everyone we knew who was involved. But that doesn't mean it didn't reach further than that. And next time, someone might not notice you missing."

"So you're my new jailor?" Ianto folded his arms and looked displeased.

"Jailor is such a harsh word," Jack protested.

"Will you let me go if I answer your questions?" Ianto asked, changing tactics.

"And what questions would those be? Have you not been completely honest with us?" Perhaps he was being a bit unfair, teasing him like this but Jack couldn't help himself.

"You know very well what I'm speaking about." Ianto, on the other hand, didn't seem nearly as amused as Jack had hoped he'd be.

"You don't want to stay here and join us? We could use an archivist," Jack wheedled. He wanted to keep Ianto here, wanted to know why he couldn't die but at the same time feared the knowledge because then he no longer had an excuse for keeping him here.

"What I want, Captain, is the ability to leave this place. I want to see the sun and see people that aren't you or your agents. I want my freedom."

Jack didn't have an answer to that.

***

In the end, Ianto gave in to Harkness' repeated offers of employment. Sheer boredom had led him to exploring the labyrinthian Archives; it looked like no one had stepped foot within it for years - perhaps even decades. Boxes with files stuffed haphazardly inside of them stacked upon each other. Alien artifacts - not even labelled - sat on shelves, row upon row with no seeming order to them. And while Ianto had not spent much time in the Archives at Torchwood One, it still made him wince to see so much just thrown about with little regard for what it may be.

"And how," Ianto asked himself, his words echoing in the cavern-like environment of the Archives, "do they ever _find_ anything?" He had seen Captain Harkness and Tosh and Suzie and even Owen (once) disappear within these walls only to return with whatever they had sought. Sometimes. Occasionally.

Nonetheless, he could now understand why Harkness wanted his help. Once he got his head around what acceding to his request meant (personally, professionally, for the future, and for the immediate present), it didn't take long for him to begin to sort things out.

Well, that was a lie. It took him a while to figure out the various classification systems used (at last count, five), what various abbreviations meant (different people used different ones), and that someone (several someones if Ianto had read the scrawled note Harkness had handed to him) had, at some point, an actual _system_ that future archivists somewhat followed.

"You know," Ianto observed during a lunch break he took with the rest of the agents at Torchwood Three, "I almost think you broke me out so that you'd have a willing slave to sort out your Archives." He hid a smile at the various looks of outrage on their faces. Apparently joking about his incarceration and unwilling experimentation upon his person was not acceptable. Too bad. It happened to him and this was how he dealt with it. Sometimes. Well, at least today.

Ianto would cheerfully admit that he hadn't fully recovered mentally from his little adventure with UNIT. Captain Harkness was probably right to keep him under continued observation. It didn't mean that he wasn't handling his experiences; he raged against the gods, fate, or whatnot within the confines of his room. He had sent dozens of bullets into the target on the gun range. He had written long diatribes in the journal he had asked Tosh to pick up for him. He had cleaned the Hub from top to bottom, or at least those areas that the agents tended to congregate within. He had meditated and performed katas designed to sublimate his anger and desire for vengeance. And all of that worked to an extent but time… time would solve the rest of it.

"A slave, huh?" Harkness quipped. "Does that mean you'll wear a sexy harem outfit?"

Ianto rolled his eyes in response even as Suzie barked out a laugh that seemed to surprise her and Tosh blushed bright red and Owen sputtered and muttered about how he didn't want to hear about Jack's sick fantasies.

"I don't look good in gauze," Ianto replied before turning his attention back to his meal. "At any rate, I'm overhauling your Archival system. Just thought you should know."

As he became more involved with Torchwood Three, he began to notice more about the people with whom he was now technically working. Three was very different from One, a poor cousin in terms of manpower and sleekness and professionalism. One had corporate-chic, had hidden behind the shiny promise of modernity; Three had grunge and dirt and moxie and worked despite itself.

Suzie Costello would have loved working at One. It would have appealed to her clinical and methodical manner and the way she looked at and reverse-engineered the alien technology that came across her desk. One would have nurtured that and aimed the darkness that encased her towards the betterment of Torchwood and thus the Empire or whatever grand vision the directors had for their futures.

On the other hand, One would have eaten up Toshiko. They would have bled her technical genius dry, kept her chained to her desk, and letting her out only for sustenance and sleep. She wouldn't push back for herself, but for her work? That she would guard like a fierce lioness over her prey.

One would have sucked Owen Harper dry, using his anger at the world for the death of his fiancee (he found the personnel files his first day sorting out the Archives and he took the opportunity to learn about his new captors) until he burnt himself out. A dose of Retcon or a bullet to the brain for forced retirement would have been his ultimate fate. One didn't believe in keeping around people who couldn't pull their own weight.

At first glance, the three didn't seem to have much in common beyond working at the same place. It took several weeks of careful observation for Ianto to realize what kept them at Three: all of them had an intense desire to please Harkness.

He didn't understand their loyalty to the Captain but it was there; different reasons for each of them but still binding them to him. Was this why Yvonne had hated Harkness? His ability to foster such devotion?

Ianto didn't know, just as he didn't know why Harkness remained involved with Torchwood.

"Your personnel file is missing from the Archives," Ianto commented one evening as he shared a late supper with the man. "Interesting that. One would think you had something to hide."

"Maybe you haven't looked hard enough," the Captain suggested. Ianto snorted with disbelief.

"Keep your secrets," he said and returned his attention to the takeaway they had ordered.

Captain Harkness had yet to actually reveal his true reason for not letting Ianto go beyond the boundaries of the Hub. It wasn't for scintillating conversation, seeing as Ianto and he mostly discussed the Archives and danced around Ianto's continued requests to leave his 'care.' Despite his evasiveness, Ianto suspected the other man was interested in his Immortality.

Always hinting at but never asking directly, Harkness kept pushing to know about Ianto's past: when he discovered his inability to die; where he grew up; who his family was. All answered with flippant remarks because despite being grateful for his rescue as a lab rat, he didn't exactly trust this Torchwood. Perhaps if Harkness let him actually _leave_ the Hub, even if accompanied by one of the Three's agents, Ianto might feel more sanguine in answering them.

And then there was the fear: the uneasiness of wondering when Harkness would tire of his dissembling and authorize Doctor Harper to perform the same tests as UNIT had to try and discover the cause of his Immortality.

None of this made Ianto keen to trust Harkness; while he happily turned his attention to the Archives just to have something to do with his days, he also tried to figure out how he might regain his freedom.

Not an easy task and at times, Ianto despaired of ever feeling the sun again.

About the only shining light he had about his situation was Lise's survival. Lise - now known as Tamara Livingston - had moved to the United States and had begun working at a medical research laboratory. She promised to not only keep in touch via email but also to alert Daniel as soon as he returned from wherever he had gone off to. They both hoped he could use his contacts in the Stargate Program to free him if he still remained in this half-captive state.

More than that, Lise had finally mentioned just who from the many names he had listed for her to contact in case of an emergency she had emailed. It should have surprised him that Methos had not only responded but had been the one to contact the Brig and arrange for Three's involvement but somehow it didn't. He hadn't seen the other Immortal in quite a while - centuries really - but they had always gotten along well. And like Ianto, he would have known the danger inherent in allowing mortals to discover the secret of Immortals. Better for those involved to believe Ianto had unique abilities.

It hadn't taken much to convince Lise to give him his email address; Methos had responded to his inquiry with a politeness that belied the situation as well as the information that he had opted to remain in Cardiff for the foreseeable future. Reading between the lines of the polite email made it clear that Methos stayed in Cardiff in case he needed to take Ianto's head. And if he were to lose his head, Ianto could think of few better others to have his Quickening. More than that, he appreciated knowing he had an ally so near; it made his enforced stay within the Hub a bit easier to bear.

***

Suzie looked to where Jack sat, leaning back in his chair and staring at his monitor. He did that a lot lately. It didn't take a genius to guess that her boss was looking at their new… guest? Archivist? Suzie still didn't know how to classify the man they had rescued from the UNIT research lab and now kept in the Hub.

It had made sense, at first. They might not know everything that those damned UNIT scientists had done to the man, but from the notes they had gone through, they knew enough to realize that he had been tortured. Hell! The glimpse they had had when they had lurched into the room they had held him had told them that.

But now? Over a month had passed since he had woken after being rescued and Jones appeared to have recovered. He no longer spent hours on the gun range, which made her happier since it meant she could get in some practice. Tosh had written a program that wouldn't allow Jones to leave the room until all the weapons and ammunition had been put away. At the same time, Jack had refused any of them entrance to the range at the same time, not wanting to risk one of them getting shot by mistake.

Since Suzie didn't particularly want to get shot, she hadn't fussed too much about his directive.

Jones had stopped ignoring all of them in the Hub. Not only did he work in the Archives, complaining about what a mess it was, but he even joined them for meals and shared his coffee with them. For that alone, none of them had complained when Jack had first mentioned hiring on their foundling as their archivist.

None of that changed the fact that they really couldn't just keep the man inside the Hub at all times. Jones didn't pose a threat to the ordinary Welsh citizen any longer. As demure and unimposing as he might appear, she had no doubt he could - and would - hurt them all very seriously to gain his freedom.

So she needed to speak to Jack. Jack, whose obsession with the other man had reached epic proportions.

Sometimes she hated being second-in-command. Both Toshiko and Owen had refused to let her put this on them, pointing out that as his second, she would have a better chance of convincing him than they. She wasn't sure about that but she also couldn't keep putting it off any longer.

Taking a deep breath, she made her way to Jack's office and sat down uninvited in his visitor's chair.

"Jack," she stated and waited for him to meet her eyes. He gave her a big grin and stopped fiddling around with the papers on his desk.

"What can I do for you Suzie?" he asked with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"Not that," she said. "Look. I don't know what's going with you and Jones - nor do I want to."

"He's our archivist," he protested.

"Whatever," Suzie shrugged. "When are you going to let him leave the Hub?"

By the startled look in his eyes, he clearly hadn't expected her to attack him on this front. Or maybe not so bluntly. "What do you mean?" Did he look unsure for a moment? It bothered her - Jack was always confident and never looked like he didn't know what to do.

"Look, Jack. Someone had to have told the Brig about his capture. I've sat in enough of those damned UNIT meetings to know that the Brig is retired and only intervenes when someone brings him in."

"I told the Brig he was fine," Jack protested.

"But you're not letting him leave the Hub! And who knows when whoever told the Brig about him is going to get tired of not seeing him and starts fussing!"

"He's not safe," Jack said, arms crossed and looking quite stubborn.

She snorted in response. "Jack, he's fine. He hasn't tried to hurt anyone who comes up behind him in weeks. He's interacting with us perfectly fine. You need to figure out why you don't want him gone and soon. You can't keep him locked up forever. Then you're no better than UNIT."

Suzie escaped after that, retreating to the tourist office where she could hide from him. She didn't think he would hurt her, not really but she had no desire to remain a target for his anger.

***

Jack felt nervous. He didn't like it. He wished he could blame someone for it, but he couldn't. Suzie's little confrontation with him this afternoon had only brought to light something he had tried to ignore; namely, his obsession with Ianto Jones.

Immortal like him but in a different manner; tortured for three months but able to pull himself back together and from the edge of sanity within a month - knowing what worked and what didn't; knowledgeable enough about Torchwood to organize an Archival system that had sadly put to shame anything that had previously been there for at least the last three decades.

Ianto Jones was an enigma and Jack wanted nothing more than to unravel his secrets. He didn't doubt that the other man had many - perhaps as much as he did. Despite numerous conversations, no one had discovered just how old the other man was. They hadn't even got a true confirmation that the 'Ianto Jones' the Rift had taken in 1989 was the same as the 'Ianto Jones' before them.

He liked the challenge Jones presented him; this didn't keep a part of him from fearing to bare his soul. He had never told _anyone_ about his inability to die. Those that knew found out about it accidentally and if he was lucky, they didn't treat him any differently. If he wasn't? Well, there was a reason he hated Torchwood in its early days.

Still, it seemed that his choice of refusing to let Jones leave the Hub had backfired. As much as he hated to admit it, Suzie had been right to prod him in this instance.

So… now he just had to find the other man and have a long overdue conversation with him before sending Tosh with him to find someplace to live.

Not an impossible task, right?

***

In the short time that Ianto had agreed to work for Torchwood Three, the Archives had become his domain and his domain only. A raised eyebrow and fierce expression had taught all of Three's agents to quietly leave whatever artifacts they wished catalogued and stored in the Incoming room he had set aside near the front of the Archives. A simple tweak of the Archival program allowed the agents to email him their requests if they wished to work on a particular alien artifact so that he could make it available for them.

He smiled with some amount of satisfaction at how quickly he had cowed them into following his system and leaving him alone. While he had spent time in the Torchwood-One Archives, his position had been far too junior for him to lord over it as he might wish. Here, with a limited number of agents, most of whom had no desire to step foot within the darkened corridors that made up Three's Archives, no one questioned his edicts.

At least not after the first time.

As near as he could tell, there hadn't been a competent or steady archivist assigned to Three for at least three decades, perhaps longer. It meant a lot of work for him but he didn't mind it. It kept his mind busy and prevented him from brooding.

"Ahem," a male voice said from behind him. "Not that I mind the view, but I wanted to speak with you." Ianto slowly straightened from where he had been filing and turned around, an impassive look on his face. Captain Jack Harkness stood before him, an unrepentant grin on his face that hinted at… something he couldn't quite define.

"Of course, Captain," Ianto said. "Perhaps we should retire to your office?" Considering the way in which the Captain had already handled several of the artifacts in the room, he didn't want the other man to ruin his hard work.

"Sure," Harkness agreed. Small talk kept them occupied, with Ianto making a small detour to the kitchenette for coffee, before they took their respective seats in Harkness' office.

"So then," Ianto began when it appeared the Captain was content to simply sip his coffee. "What did you want to speak to me about?"

***

The direct approach. It shouldn't have surprised Jack but then his nerves on how to approach the other man might had had something to do with it. He could do this. He was Captain Jack Harkness and no one - not even an Immortal someone - would intimidate him.

"How do you like it here?"

He was graced with an eye roll. "The same as I've been the last few times you asked me. Gonna let me go soon?" Ianto countered.

"Maybe," he said. "You're not going to go and kill anyone if we do, will you?"

"No," he answered.

Was that the whole truth he wondered? Or did Jones prevaricate, eager to leave the confines of the Hub and not caring what happened once he had his release.

"If I let you get your own flat, would you still work here? Or would you disappear?" He needed to know. He felt… well, he didn't quite know what he felt, to be honest. He just knew that if Ianto Jones disappeared something would be lost.

"I already agreed to be your archivist," Jones replied.

"Right," Jack said, letting his feelings of uncertainty color his voice. "I'll speak to Tosh. She can help you find a place."

Jones inclined his head in thanks. Not respect. Jack didn't think the other man held him in respect. Not like the rest of his team did. And he wanted it - wanted the respect and awe that his other agents gave him as if it were his due.

"Was there anything else, Captain?" Jones inquired, full of politeness and civility.

_Now or never,_ Jack reminded himself. "Your immortality." Watched as the other man stiffened with an unnamed emotion. "How did it come about?"

"You've read the UNIT reports, I'm certain," Jones prevaricated.

Jack snorted. "They didn't tell me what I want to know."

"You'll have to be more specific." He sounded resigned, which was not something Jack desired. He wanted the other man to feel comfortable with his company, to share parts of himself with Jack.

Not that Jack felt that he could do the same. He liked his secrets - and so, apparently did Ianto Jones.

"What do you know of me?" Jack changed his tack.

"Do you want fact or rumor?"

"Why not give me both?"

"Very well," Jones stated. "You go by Jack Harkness, though the upper management at One and UNIT doubt it is your true name. Despite their best efforts, they were never able to wrest control of the Rift or the Hub from your control once you became Three's head shortly after the Millennium. Prior to your ascension as leader of Three, you were a field agent or, on occasion, a free agent. Your Archives are remarkably free of information on you, which indicates you either hate paperwork or have consciously cleaned out files that might have information on you. Furthermore, since your name has appeared in Torchwood files throughout the last century, you either have a family legacy or… you're a lot older than you appear."

"Wow," Jack gulped. "I… didn't expect you to get all that."

Jones rolled his eyes. "I'm an archivist. Now and in the past. I know how to find information."

"I can't die," Jack finally stated. He had never told anyone this and in saying the actual words, he felt both relief and fear. "I don't know why, but I can't. You can't either. Do you know why?"

Stillness and silence. Then… "Do you have something we can drink?"

Not quite what he expected but it didn't stop Jack from grabbing the bottle of scotch he kept in his desk drawer and filling two tumblers with the golden liquid.

Jones took a sip and seemed to savor or at least appreciate the taste. "I was born on August 19, 1983. Or rather, I was _found_ on that date. Not that my parents even told me I was adopted. I found that out later. Much later." An ironic twist of a smile and another sip.

"When I was six, my parents took my sister and I to Bute Park. I don't really remember all of this - I was too young - but I do remember the golden light that surrounded me and took me away."

The Rift then. Ianto Jones was the child in that 1989 report. Perhaps Tosh was right? Maybe the Rift really did make people immortal. "Where did you end up?"

"No idea, actually. I went from the park to some standing stones. I couldn't understand anyone for months but from what the priests later told me, I just appeared out of no where, screaming and crying. Didn't matter really, I was cared for - treated pretty well, especially considering the time." Jones gave a shrug as if it really didn't matter; Jack supposed it didn't but he still itched to know more about him, to find out just what had happened to make him unable to die.

"I don't know how old I was precisely, but old enough for my guardians to begin arranging a marriage for me, when we were attacked. I died - except, unlike everyone else killed in the raid, I came back to life. Ever since then, I don't die permanently." He paused, staring into Jack's hopeful eyes.

"For the longest time, I had no idea why I couldn't remain dead. It… many years later, I found someone who told me what I was - what _we_ were. Every single one of us is a foundling. All of us age until we are killed. After that, we can get hurt, even killed, but we will _always_ come back. She… she also told me that I would always know when someone like us was nearby, that I would feel a buzz of some sort."

"A buzz?" Jack asked, puzzled. He certainly hadn't felt anything from Jones.

"It's an uncomfortable feeling the first few times you feel it. Like your skin is crawling with energy."

"Oh," Jack said. His heart pounded with disappointment as he began to realize that he had never felt that before.

"Captain Harkness," Jones began, his voice soft and calm, faint with sympathy, "I'm afraid I have not felt that buzz when I am around you. For whatever reason that you are unable to die, it is a different one than mine." He took a break, placing his glass on the desk between them and stood. He grasped Jack's shoulder and squeezed it gently. "I wish I could help you, provide you with the answers you want but I cannot."

Jack watched in devastated silence as Jones walked out of his office, leaving him alone to his thoughts and renewed despair.

***

Ianto sighed as he paced in 'his' room. It had not been an easy day despite the welcome news of being able to find his own flat. He appreciated that Harkness had asked him to explain his inability to die rather than demand his 'secret' like so many others had in the past; he felt a degree of discomfit at his inability to provide the other man the answers he seemed to want.

Never, in all the centuries he had lived, had he heard of a person unable to die without the 'buzz' that accompanied all of his kind. On the other hand, it did explain the references scattered throughout the Archives to an 'Agent Harkness' or 'Field Agent Harkness' or 'CJH' or 'Consultant Harkness' - especially since they went back for over more than a century.

It also explained the Captain's attitude towards his agents. He held them close to him while subtly pushing them away. Ianto understood why he did that now, understood that it was more than just a fear of losing his agents to 'death by Torchwood.'

Ianto had already decided to remain at Torchwood and now, he had even more reason to do so. How many Immortals had he shepherded in this? How many had he helped come to grips with forever remaining the same whilst friends and family and loved ones aged and died? Helping Jack Harkness come to grips with his Immortality - even if it differed from his own - was something he _had_ to do; he couldn't leave the other man behind without at least attempting to give what aid and comfort he could.

Now, he just needed to arrange for the delivery of one of his spare swords and check in with Methos and everything just might be alright.

***

Jack didn't move. He felt stretched thin. Lost. Scraped clean through. After all that - the wondering and hoping and yes, even feelings of relief that he would finally _know_ \- only for Jones to not have the answer he so desperately wanted - no needed.

He grunted, lips twisting into a parody of grin. It figured that even in his Immortality he had to be different.

No wonder the Doctor and Rose had left him alone.

In a fit of anger he threw the tumbler in his hand at the wall. Glass tinkled as the remaining liquid splattered the floor. He roared his anger, his pain, his weariness. He had waited and waited — years and decades and more to find someone — anyone — to tell him what he was. It wasn't fair that when he finally found someone he thought could tell him the truth of what he was that that person didn't know! He didn't want to wait anymore. Except, it seemed, he would have to continue to do so.

For a time traveler who had adopted the early twenty-first century as a favored destination and the Cardiff Rift as a perfect place to refuel his beloved TARDIS, the Doctor certainly didn't seem in a rush to return here anytime soon so that Jack could gain his answers.

Scowling, Jack shrugged on his great coat and stalked out of the Hub, ignoring the crinkle and crunch of glass under his heavy boots as he left his office. He needed out of here and away from the reminders of just how different he was, even, apparently, from other Immortals.

***

Jack stumbled back into the Hub, the effects of the alcohol he had drunk finally wearing off now that he had ceased drinking for a couple of hours. He probably smelled like a distillery but he found it difficult to care. He tossed his clothes to the floor of the bunker he claimed as his living quarters and entered his shower. Adjusting the temperature to just that side of discomfort, he let the water pound down on his abused body, washing away the sweat and grime of a heavy night of drinking and shagging. He didn't even remember the name of the girl whose bed he had fallen into; not that it mattered since he had only wanted the sweet oblivion of no-holds-bar sex and that was what he had gotten.

His agents had all arrived by the time he had finished cleaning up and dressing. If any of them saw something amiss with him, they did the courtesy of not bringing it to his attention. Jones - who had taken over the task of providing the Hub with coffee not long after he had started working in the Archives - had left him a mug of the brew on his desk. Jack also noted that someone - again, probably Jones - had swept up the shattered glass from last night. He appreciated the lack of evidence of his temper.

Jack had had years of practice at hiding his emotions. He didn't find it very difficult to thrust his disappointment and anger and all the other negative emotions he had at not having an answer to why he couldn't die deep into his mind. He had no desire to let the others of his team realize just how upset he was since that would just invite questions to something he had no desire to discuss. He just hoped that Jones wouldn't push him on anything.

***

He needn't have worried. Jones had remained in the Archives all morning, only emerging when Tosh had called him up for lunch. The other man had gazed at him for a long moment when he arrived at the conference room; Jack had struggled to keep any emotions from his face. Whatever Jones had seen in his face had kept him quiet. That was all that Jack had cared about.

"Tosh, look for some flats suitable for our new archivist to live," he ordered before lunch had ended. He had told his newest team member he could move out of the Hub and no matter how angry and disappointed he was at not having the answers he craved, he wouldn't - couldn't - go back on his word. Not in this instance.

He refused to examine why the grateful and surprised look he had received from Jones warmed a part of him that he had long thought dead.

***

A part of Ianto had been prepared to accept that he would have to remain in the Hub for the foreseeable future. He had noticed that Harkness had left the Hub in a fit of pique last night, if the shattered tumbler had suggested anything. Despite it not being his fault for not knowing why the other man couldn't die, it wouldn't have surprised him if the offer of freedom had been rescinded.

It said something that Harkness hadn't done that.

Judging by the cloud of emotions that surrounded him, Ianto believed it best to leave the Captain alone for a while before approaching him. Let him recover from this blow first. Meanwhile, he had a flat to find, a sword to ship to himself and a friend to contact.

***

Despite a Rift alert, Tosh found him before the day ended and handed him a list of flats available for let. "I called the estate agent and we have an appointment for tomorrow to check these out," she informed him. She grimaced for a moment before sharing a smile with him. "Well, provided that the Rift doesn't spit anything out."

"Thank you," Ianto said, touched that she had gone to so much trouble for him. "This is more than I expected."

She reddened under his thankful gaze. "Jack helped me, when I first… came here," she explained. "I know what it's like to move here with next to nothing." She didn't say anything more, despite Ianto's raised eyebrow in inquiry. Perhaps later she would explain.

"Thank you," he reiterated. "It will be nice to move out of here." To see the sun. To feel the air stir around him. To see people other than his fellow agents.

Ianto supposed he could actually leave the Hub now. He didn't think Harkness would begrudge him the need to step outside of the Hub and onto the quay. But whilst Methos had already assured him of the lack of Immortal activity within Cardiff at present, he still didn't want to risk being caught alone without a sword. There was a good chance another Immortal would hesitate to approach and issue a Challenge should they see him with a mortal, something Ianto planned to take full advantage of until he could arm himself properly.

He hadn't been so long without a blade in centuries and it bothered him more than he thought.

So no, despite the closeness of the Hub, he would remain in its confines until the morrow; one more night in its windowless environs would not drive him over the edge into which he had yet to falter.

***

Toshiko had very good taste. Each of the flats she had arranged for the estate agent to show them reflected that. A part of him was surprised at how well she read his likes and dislikes to match it so well until he remembered that she _was_ Three's Intelligence gatherer and even if she mostly used her computers and their programs to gather the necessary data for her job she was still observant.

Harkness had been kind enough to give them the afternoon for the search and Ianto seized on that gratefully. It didn't take him long to decide on a flat located quite close to the one which Methos had indicated in one of his emails he had let. Within walking distance of the Hub and the shops, the flat satisfied his needs completely, with enough rooms to not only house whatever he decided to ship out here but also allow him enough space to practice his sword play.

By the end of the day, he had signed his new lease and received a set of keys. Tosh had issued an invitation to take him shopping, should he need to do so and Ianto returned to the Hub with a satisfied smirk on his face. It wouldn't take long to arrange for one of his storage units to ship its contents to him here. And after that, he would not have to spend every moment of his day in the Hub.

"Were you successful?" Harkness asked as Ianto entered the Hub.

"Very," Ianto informed him, smiling a bit at what having his own flat meant.

"That's… good," the other man said with what looked like a false grin.

"Thank you," he said, not wanting to try and figure out what bothered the head of Three for the moment. He didn't want to tackle the issues with Immortality and living with people who would die before he did until after he had settled into his new home. "How are you feeling?"

Harkness gave him another false smile. "I'm always good." Ianto rolled his eyes but didn't call him out on the obvious lie.

"I should be moved out of the Hub by the end of the week," he warned.

"That's fine. Let me know if you need help unpacking or something," Harkness said.

"Sure," Ianto agreed. "And I'll make sure you have a spare key to my place when I get it." With that, he turned and headed to his rooms. He had a lot to arrange if he wanted to move in by the end of the week.

***

"Nice place," Methos commented as he stalked around the flat, examining various items in the bookshelves or on the walls.

"Hmm… thanks, I think," Ianto replied. "One of my new… colleagues arranged for the contents of my London apartment to be shipped to Cardiff. It seemed a waste to ignore Suzie's gesture of good will, so…"

"You're happy to continue working at Torchwood?" Methos asked carefully, his back turned away from Ianto and making it difficult for the other man to read him.

"I think… I think it will be interesting."

"That's not a real answer."

"No, I suppose not," Ianto agreed. He sighed. "They… They are nothing like those at London."

"Still… something more is keeping you here. If it were me, I wouldn't be around here, not with UNIT still around."

"You're right. Something more _is_ keeping me here," Ianto said. He swirled the brandy glass he held in his hand and wondered what he should tell his old friend. "Do you remember what is was like for you when you first realized you were Immortal?"

Methos snorted and sank into a loose-limbed sprawl on the couch. "You know very well I can't remember much of my early years."

Ianto nodded in acknowledgment. "I hadn't forgotten." Whether he actually _believed_ such was another thing but he wouldn't insult his longtime friend by implying otherwise. "I'm certain you've seen this though, in your own students. The way they become after they realize they're Immortal and everyone and everything they know won't outlive them unless they're unlucky."

"I thought Lise went to America," Methos said.

"She did."

"And you have a new student already?" He seemed flabbergasted by that and well he might. "I haven't felt another one of us."

"He's… he's not like _us_," Ianto explained. "I don't know what he is, to be honest. Just that he apparently can't die."

"Sounds like one of us," Methos pointed out.

"No buzz. No Quickening. Definitely does not have _any_ sword training. And he's mentioned he's been decapitated in the past… and he's still here." Ianto ticked off each of his counterpoints with his fingers. "So. Immortal, but not one of us."

"I take it, it's someone at Three?" Methos finally asked.

"Yep," Ianto admitted.

"And that person agreed to be your student? Do you really think you _should_ have a student so soon after…?"

After UNIT and their macabre 'research.' After the destruction of all he knew from his previous life. After being exposed for who and _what_ he was.

"Maybe," Ianto replied honestly. "I don't rightly know and that's the truth. A part of me wants to disappear. Return to Egypt perhaps, or maybe Lima. Spend as long as it might take to recover and make sure I am… forgotten. But there's something about here, about _him_ that won't let me. It's like, if I leave, I'm making one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made."

Silence descended in the room and Methos appeared to be thinking over what Ianto had confessed. Finally, he looked up and toasted him with his bottle of beer. "You do what you need to… and I'll be here, at least for a little longer. I've discovered that Doctor Michael Adamson has a desperate need for the archives at the University."

"You don't need to stay," Ianto protested, though he also felt touched that his old friend would _want_ to remain in Cardiff.

"Of course, I do," Methos disagreed. "You might say you're fine and have worked through all your anger, but none of us know for sure that you're not going to go off and kill a whole bunch of innocents."

Ianto gaped at him before chuckling. "You still don't pull punches, do you?" He shook his head and shrugged. "You're probably right to stay then. I don't _think_ I'll snap but if I do, I can think of only a handful of people I would want my Quickening to go to."

Methos waggled his eyebrows, hiding whatever shock he might have felt at the confession. "You flatter me." He took a sip from his beer and sank deeper into the couch. "So. This new student of yours. Has he agreed?"

"Nope."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Oh, he will," Ianto smirked, an impish gleam in his eyes. "He might not know it, but he needs this."

Soon afterwards, Methos made his way to his own flat and left Ianto to his own thoughts. He was happy the other man had manufactured the meeting - carefully set up as several meetings at the local pub, which then led to a casual friendship so that it wouldn't surprise the watchers on Ianto if he invited the other man up to his flat. By now both UNIT and Torchwood would have a dossier on Michael Adamson, one which would hold up to the strictest scrutiny.

Frankly, it made Ianto feel safer just to know that one of his oldest friends was in Cardiff and looking out for him. Of course, a part of him had worried that the centuries that had passed since he had last seen the other man had weakened the once strong friendship they had had but to his relief, it hadn't. They each still had their secrets but Ianto had not lied when he said he wouldn't mind if Methos eventually received his Quickening. Better him than some second- or third-rate idiot with a sword who got lucky.

He grinned with sudden abandonment as a breeze from the open window caressed his skin. The physical proof of his freedom capped off the end of a very good week.

***

"Want to grab a drink after work?" Owen asked Suzie.

"I'm busy," she said, her eyes and hands focused on the metal gauntlet they had fished out of the Bay a couple of weeks ago. He scowled at her inattention, angry at her refusal for reasons he didn't want to explore. It wasn't like they had a… formalized relationship; they didn't and they both liked it that way. Except Suzie had refused to join him for a drink ever since that damned gauntlet had been found.

"Fine," he huffed and he stomped back to the autopsy bay, pushing past Tosh without another word. He'd just have to go by himself and see who he could pull. Wasn't like it was difficult for him, after all.

***

He didn't want to admit it but Jack missed the presence of another person living in the Hub. Even if they didn't speak or see each other after eating dinner, just the knowledge that someone else was present relieved a part of him that he didn't understand.

Jones had moved out and into that flat Tosh had found for him a few days earlier and he could already see the difference in the other man. Before, Jones had looked as if he had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looked more free now. Happier definitely. As if the last marks of his imprisonment had been lifted simply by allowing him to live elsewhere while working here.

Jack just wished that his own burdens could be soothed so easily.

"Coffee?" Jones asked as he slipped into his office.

"Yours?" Jack grinned easily, as if he hadn't spent all morning brooding.

"Of course," Jones said, handing over the mug he had brought with him. "I don't know how you managed before I came here."

He flashed him a smile and sipped the coffee; excellent and seductive as always. "How's the new place?"

"I'm settled in," Jones answered. "Met a nice bloke."

"So I heard." Jack didn't know what to think about that. He had no cause to prevent Jones from socializing with others but… And this 'Michael Adamson' seemed on the up and up, so… And yet.

And yet, Jack felt a measure of discomfit at the idea of Jones and Adamson. A feeling of possessiveness he didn't have a right to feel but that echoed in his soul in a way he didn't understand. So he ignored it.

"I figured you'd read the report, Captain."

"Why do you only call me Captain? You can call me Jack. Everyone else does."

"You've not invited me to before this," Jones replied. "Thank you… Jack. And call me Ianto."

An odd custom, old fashioned and it took Jack back to a time when manners and etiquette held the world together and no man or lady ventured outside without a proper hat and gloves. "A bit out of your time there," he said.

"I know," Ianto replied. "I don't have to hide who or what I am with you… do I?" Jack raised an eyebrow and grinned happily.

"No, I suppose you don't." Immortals of the world unite! Weekly meeting complete with nostalgia.

"See you around, Jack."

And Ianto walked away, leaving Jack to his melancholy thoughts. Except, even as the other man walked away, Jack felt uplifted for the first time in a long while. Jones — Ianto — had managed to spark an interest in him that he didn't quite understand but didn't want to see die.

***

Another day at Torchwood with no Rift alerts had Jack sending his team home early. Why sit around when the Rift was quiet and the weather passably nice for Cardiff? Ianto opted to remain rather than leave like everyone else had.

"Your team is floundering," Ianto observed. His first salvo at forcing Jack to come to grips with being Immortal; he had no idea if it would work but hoped that pride and perhaps the real feelings Jack had towards the team he had chosen would help.

"What do you mean?" Jack asked, confusion written all over his face.

"Take a look at your agents, Captain. A real look. See what's going on beneath the surface and not what they are showing you."

"They're all fine," Jack insisted. Ianto sighed and leaned back against the doorjamb.

"No they're not. And they're going to break, sooner or later, if you don't do something about it."

Disbelief stared back at him. Ianto didn't want to get involved, not really but now that Jack had allowed him to live somewhere other than the Hub and he had decided to stay on as the archivist, he really couldn't remain quiet. "Toshiko doesn't do much except for her work. She sees you as her savior and she will do anything to make you proud of her. Owen pushes at you like he would an older brother and all the while looks up to you to keep him from falling. And Suzie? She sees Torchwood as giving her something so few others know or have and you're the one responsible for giving it to her. She's loyal to you because of that and wants to excel so she doesn't let you down."

"How is that bad?" Jack asked.

"Haven't you noticed how lost Suzie is becoming? All she cares about right now is figuring out the secrets of that damned gauntlet found a couple of weeks back! She stays late working on it and comes in early to do the same. I wouldn't be surprised if sometime soon she slipped it into her bag and brought it home with her!" Ianto huffed in annoyance. "It's not healthy Jack."

"Anything else you want to complain about?" Jack asked, voice tight with anger.

"Yeah, actually," Ianto said. "You need more people here."

"This isn't London!"

"I _know_ that and I'm not saying it should be! You have what, five people to monitor and control and contain the Rift! Five. And what happens if something comes through that's too large for us to handle? What happens when Toshiko or Owen or Suzie drives themselves into exhaustion and makes a mistake that kills others? You can't die permanently and neither can I but there is only so much we can do - and you won't even let me out into the field!"

"We're fine," Jack insisted.

"No you're not, Jack. All of you are hanging on by a thread and if you don't think UNIT or the Committee are just waiting for you to slip up, you're a bigger fool than I thought. You need to look at your team, Jack. And you need to protect them. They're not like us. They can and will die and right now, they don't have a long shelf life. You're their _Captain_, Jack. You have a responsibility towards them."

Jack looked at him flabbergasted before throwing a right punch at his jaw. Ianto fell back, the pain only momentary before the bruise healed. "Think about it, Jack. Before it's too late and you no longer can't just ignore it." He spun around and left Jack, left the Hub, and hoped he wouldn't find himself jobless in the morning.

Not that it mattered overly much. He only stayed in Cardiff to see if he could help the other man, no matter what else he had told others. If he refused it, well… at least he had tried.

***

Jack wanted to ignore the comments Ianto had made to him. Unfortunately, the accusations continued to echo in his head, continued to enrage him. How dare the other man tell him how to take care of his people! Hadn't he chosen each of them? Hadn't he rescued Tosh from UNIT? Hadn't he given Owen a new lease on life, given Suzie the freedom to explore whatever she wanted to her heart's content?

And yet. And yet, he couldn't deny the kernel of truth in what Ianto had said. He was the Captain and the team was _his_ His people. And if he didn't care for them, who would? Was Ianto correct? Was his team falling apart through his benign neglect?

He considered the accusations carefully; in the end, he had to conclude that Ianto had been right. At the same time, he didn't love the suggestions the other man had made on how to prevent his team, his people from falling apart. He liked that he only had charge of a small group of people. It meant he didn't need to worry about more people whose death's he would cause simply by hiring them for Torchwood.

Torchwood killed. He knew that. Had seen it over and over and over again in the decades of service he had given the Institute: without fail, Torchwood became the instrument of death. Except for him and apparently Ianto Jones.

Jack didn't know if he would listen to Jones about hiring more people but he would look to Suzie. See if he was right. And if he was? Maybe his other advice was worth listening to as well.

***

As he had for the past week, Owen slunk into the Hub late and hungover. And, as had happened each morning, he found a mug of coffee with _something_ that cured his hangover better than anything he'd ever tried. Whatever it was, Jones refused to share it with him but he really couldn't find it inside himself to care.

He gratefully grabbed his mug from where it sat, inhaled the fragrance of the coffee, and drank it down as quickly as he could. From past experience, he knew it would take about twenty minutes before the rest of his symptoms would depart; plenty of time for him to do a quick scan of the emails in his in-box. He glanced around the Hub and tried to judge the temperament of his colleagues based on their current activities.

Tosh seemed the same as ever, specs firmly perched on her nose, her fingers flying across her keyboard, attention fixed on her monitor. He snorted as he saw that Suzie had already immersed herself in studying that damned gauntlet they had dragged out of the Bay. It was all she fucking cared about lately and he fucking hated it, not least because it meant he had to go out on the pull rather than have her. He didn't see a sign of their newest agent, which meant he was in the Archives. Probably wouldn't see him until lunch.

That left their fearless leader. Peeking up at his office, Owen could see that he looked exactly as he had every day since Jones had moved out: brooding, uncommunicative, closed off. This morning he seemed even worse; he could only guess what had soured the Captain's mood.

He leaned back in his seat and considered the past week. All of them - well he and Suzie - had assumed Jack had already started shagging the new guy. As much as he had kept away from him during the day, Jack's eyes followed him with a possessive gleam. It didn't take a genius to know they shared a bed together. However, now Owen had reason to rethink that thought. His Captain looked frustrated, even angry. Had Ianto Jones held out on the other man? Practically unheard of!

"Suzie!" Jack's voice echoed in the Hub, loud enough to disturb even Suzie from the deep concentration into which she had fallen. Twirling his chair, Owen watched as the brunette growled under her breath and stalked towards Jack. Neither looked happy and he could only wish he were closer to hear whatever had Jack all fired up.

***

He pointed to the chair in front of his desk and watched as his second-in-command sprawled none too happily into it. "How's your work with the glove?" He watched her eyes carefully, studying her body language.

"Oh, Jack!" Her eyes lit up and she leaned forward, hands moving gracefully as she expounded on the mysteries. "It's amazing. I think… I really think the glove can bring back people from the dead!"

"Really." He tried not to sound skeptical but couldn't help it. "How?"

"I still haven't figured out how it works, but from what I can tell it requires the wearer to connect with it. After that, the user touches the body and calls them back from the dead."

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you actually tried it out?" He really hoped not. He had never liked zombies.

"No. I would tell you before I did," she pouted and tossed her hair. "Just think about it, Jack. It's absolutely amazing technology. We could do so much with it! Find out who the murderer is from a victim. Or what the afterlife is like!" Her eyes shined with excitement.

"Suzie… I'm not sure that is wise. We don't know what the glove can do precisely, or even where it comes from. We don't know what it will do to the user."

"But that's why I need to use it one someone! Come on, Jack! How difficult would it be for us to take over a murder scene from the locals and give it a go?"

He leaned back in his chair and frowned. He didn't like the fervor he heard in her voice. "Who else has looked at this glove besides you?" he asked instead.

She huffed and rolled her eyes. "Just me. You know that. You took a glance at it and gave it to me to study. Come on, Jack!"

"I want someone else to take a look at it," he countered. "I want you to be safe, Suzie Costello and no matter what you think, we don't know if the glove is truly safe."

"Honestly, Jack! Why are you so worried?"

"Because all you've done is study that damned thing since we found it. I'm worried about you," he soothed.

"Whatever," she scowled. "This is completely ridiculous. I'm perfectly fine and if something was wrong with it, wouldn't I have already been affected?"

"Can you honestly say you're not? You never usually argue with me this much, Suzie. I'd feel better if someone else takes a look at the glove, if you would study something else for a little bit and then we'll see. I promise you: if the glove is harmless, you can try it out."

While still unhappy, she agreed; he watched as she boxed it up before bringing it to him. As much as he hated to admit it, it seemed Ianto had had a valid point.

Now he had to apologize. He hated that.

***

"You were right," Jack announced as Ianto finished clearing up the coffee mugs for the day.

"About what? I'm right about a lot of things," he replied. Bringing the mugs to the small kitchen, he began to wash them. Jack hovered in the small doorway and scowled.

"About Suzie. I don't know what's wrong with the gauntlet, but it had her acting strangely."

"You took it away from her, I presume? Was that why she was sulking all day?"

"Yeah, though I'm sure Owen'll shag it out of her by tomorrow."

Ianto's lips twitched in a small smile. "He did seem rather eager to drag her out of the Hub."

The Captain hesitated where he stood; Ianto waited patiently for him to ask whatever he had on his mind. "How did you notice it? They're my people and I shouldn't have needed you to point it out to me."

He turned the water off and pulled a dishcloth off the rack to dry the mugs and pondered how to answer. Finally, as he placed the last of the mugs away he turned to face the other man. "I'm old, Jack. Very old. I've seen… a lot. And I know people."

"How old are you?" The other man looked eager for his answer.

"Older than you by quite a bit." He sighed and looked away for a minute. "I'm not trying to pull the 'wise old man' routine — you don't deserve that — but you're still young. And you still think like a mortal."

"I… I have no idea what you mean," Jack confessed and looked confused.

"I know," Ianto smiled and walked to him. "It took me years. Decades, maybe even centuries to realize that remaining isolated - that pushing away mortals - only hurt me in the end. For all that we can't die, we're still human and we still need contact. To touch others. To belong somewhere."

The other man looked away from his piercing gaze. "I don't know if I can do that. You know what Torchwood is like."

"I do. And that makes it even more important. Jack… we don't die. But they do and they deserve to be remembered as more than just their job titles or names listed in the Archives." He leaned forward and grasped his shoulder. "You've remained with Torchwood off and on for decades. You've seen so many teams come and go. Even if you're not going to remain here forever, you've chosen this place right now, right here. You have a responsibility, Jack. Don't turn away from it."

With a gentle touch, he pushed the younger Immortal out of the doorjamb and walked past him. "I'm always here, if you need to talk. I know what it's like." He paused to see if he would take him up on it but when only silence echoed, he sighed and left. Jack needed time… and if it was one thing they both had, it was that.

***

"What did you find, Tosh?" Jack asked as she entered his office.

"I was able to cross reference the gauntlet with the Archives at Torchwood House and from Torchwood-One. It took a while because the servers from One are still fried. I asked Ianto if he could direct me to anything within the Archival system that would help. Based on his suggestion, I was able to identify the gauntlet as coming from Fli'w'r."

"Fli'w'r? Are you sure?" Jack asked, voice full of worry. Every Time Agent knew how dangerous Fli'w'r tech could be to the untutored.

"According to the Archives, agents discovered a gauntlet similar to the one we found in the Bay during the First World War. The agents that experimented with the one they found became obsessed with it. They discovered that it could bring someone back to life but only for a very short period of time. It also drained the user of energy. One of the agents ended up in a coma because of it."

Jack closed his eyes. It could have gone so badly. Ianto's warning, his admonishment to pay attention to his agents instead of pretending that he had no obligation towards them had forced him to act, to prevent Suzie from getting dragged in deeper. He didn't even want to consider what might have happened.

"Alright. Thanks, Tosh. Make sure to link the records together." She nodded and left him to his thoughts.

Admitting that Ianto had been correct to scold him did not sit well with Jack. Sure, he still waited for the Doctor, hoping the Time Lord would hold the answer to why he couldn't die, why he had just left him alone of the space station surrounded by dead bodies, but he did feel an obligation to Earth and its inhabitants. Despite what Torchwood agents had thought in the past and contrary to his actions, Jack _could_ have remained unnoticed while he waited. Maybe not at first and maybe not in those first years when he couldn't figure out why he died and kept coming back, but later, when he felt more settled? Jack could have disappeared into the ether with Torchwood none the wiser.

He remained, in part, because Cardiff did serve as a fueling place for the TARDIS and knowing that, it made it easier for Jack to purposefully find the Doctor. He also remained for Torchwood; not the agents like Emily and Alice who thought torture the highest form of compliment, but for those like Harriet and Gerald, like Lucia, like Alex before he killed everyone, like his current team: men and women who genuinely believed in protecting the Earth from her enemies.

Jack had forgotten that though. Forgotten why he assembled Suzie and Owen and Tosh to join Torchwood. Had forgotten that more than one person could hold the same position, that just because four appeared to handle the Rift and everything it threw at them, didn't mean he couldn't hire more people. Had forgotten his plan to leave Torchwood and Cardiff as soon as the right Doctor appeared, meant to leave his team and protecting the Rift.

As much as he hated to admit it, he had failed; fortunately, someone had called him on it and hopefully he could remedy all that before the TARDIS arrived once again.

***

"How's your little project coming along?" Methos asked as he sipped his beer.

"Well enough, I suppose," Ianto replied and copied the other man's actions. "He's at least taken a genuine interest in his team. Told them he was planning on hiring some more people to help out."

"You still planning to remain?"

Ianto shrugged. "Might as well. Where else would I go?"

"As if you don't have several bolt holes in which to hide away until UNIT's interest in your Immortality disappeared," Methos scoffed.

"Maybe I'm tired of running," Ianto suggested.

"But you haven't been running," Methos pointed out. "Until UNIT captured you, you were living a fine life with Lise."

"We still had to move at least once a decade because we didn't age."

"And here is so much better?"

"It's not that it's better per se," Ianto began. "It's more that they all know I can't die. I can stay here and not worry about someone finding out because they already know. I can choose to leave when I want rather than having to because I'm not aging."

"What happens when your protector leaves? You've all but admitted that Harkness has plans to leave Cardiff once his Doctor arrives. Will you stay then?"

"Maybe," Ianto said. "I don't know if anyone would move against me if, or rather, when he leaves. It depends on how long it takes."

"You're gambling a lot by staying," Methos cautioned. "You don't know that he'll accept what you have to teach. You don't know that UNIT and their like will stay away from you because you work for Torchwood. Or that those colleagues you speak about so prettily will always remain supportive and not want to know the secrets of your Immortality."

"I know that," Ianto admitted. "For the first time in a long time I feel excitement. You know me, I plan so much and so far ahead that I'm rarely surprised. And it's good on the one hand, because I survive. But I'm not really living, am I? I haven't had a real relationship in years. I've held onto Lise far longer than she needed because it was easier to keep her on as a student than to set her free. I rather relish not knowing exactly what my future will hold."

Methos gazed at him for a long, silent moment. Finally, he tipped his bottle towards Ianto. "Than I wish you luck my friend."

"Thank you," Ianto said.

***

Jack, Ianto had discovered, had apparently paid attention to what he had said to him. Not only had he begun a hiring process, involving all of them in finding suitable candidates, but he had started to pay attention to his agents. He made sure that Suzie recovered from her obsession with the gauntlet; granted, that usually involved allowing Owen to leave early with her so he could provide the comfort of a good shag, but Ianto rather thought that counted. He would shoo Tosh home or suggest they go out for drinks or grab a bite to eat, all in the interest of preventing her from spending too much time in the Hub. Owen seemed happy enough to have Suzie's renewed interest in him but Jack made time to pay attention to his special projects or give him a kind word.

In all, Jack had become, if not a model boss, at least one that genuinely cared about his people.

Except when it came to Ianto. It wasn't as if the other man ignored him; oh no, it wasn't that simple. It just seemed that he couldn't get past Ianto's role in pointing out his deficiencies when it came to leading Torchwood so refrained from spending time alone with him.

On the one hand, Ianto was proud of the steps Jack had taken. It meant, in all likelihood, a longer lifespan for the agents. On the other, he found it vaguely insulting to have been so easily dismissed. Jack Harkness excited him in a way he hadn't experienced in quite a long time. It wasn't due to the challenge of a new student or even recovering from the trauma UNIT had inflicted on him. It was something else and Ianto desperately wanted to embrace it.

Too bad Harkness insisted on being stubborn.

Of course, Ianto wouldn't let his attitude deter him. He had patience and he had time on his side — at least he hoped so — and eventually he could corner Jack and see what might happen.

Until then, he sorted out the Archives.

***

Jack watched, feeling proud, as Tosh closed down her station, checked her face in a small hand mirror and happily tripped out of the Hub. She had a date, or so she had shyly informed Jack earlier that morning. He didn't mind letting her leave early, especially since she had ensured that she had completed everything due today. Also, given Owen and Suzie's habit of late arrivals or early leaving, he couldn't really complain. Even as Tosh left the Hub, he could see his other two agents cleaning up their stations — though less efficiently or neatly than Tosh had done — and clearly planning to head out early themselves.

His people seemed happy; none had asked him about his sudden interest in hiring new agents or in their individual projects but they seemed to thrive under his increased guidance. He felt, in a way, like the proverbial benevolent and munificent leader — he hated to admit that he liked the feeling.

The team had actually become just that; all three had begun to work together smoothly, the petty oneupmanship had all but disappeared when they went into the field. Before Ianto had spoken to him, Jack had considered the rivalries as nothing more than a cute affectation. He had forgotten how dangerous it could be, forgot that for all intents and purposes his team was at the forefront of a war. They kept Cardiff and its surroundings safe from alien threats — Earth's foot soldiers in a sense. He had fought with enough armies and in enough wars to know that the most successful armies had soldiers that worked together, who fought towards a common good and who believed in the man or woman who fought by their side.

Torchwood tended to exploit rivalries rather than work towards cohesion. He had claimed Torchwood-Three as his own; made it into an Institute in which the Doctor could have pride; eschewed the values that London had held to such high esteem. Now, he had completed that process in valuing the life of his agents over that of finding and taking hold of alien technology for the betterment of the British empire.

***

"You've been avoiding me," Ianto accused. Jack looked up and saw that the other man leaned against the doorjamb, his jacket held by the crook of his finger over his shoulder, a scowl fixed on his face.

"No, I haven't!" Jack protested. Even to his own ears it sounded weak.

"Right," Ianto rolled his eyes with what could only be exasperation. He stalked — there could be no other word for it — into the room; pointing an accusatory finger at him, he started in on him. "Which was it? The fact that I don't have those answers you want? That I saw what you refused to and called you on it? That I used to work for One? Or is it a combination of it all?"

Jack could feel himself flush; he hadn't done _that_ in decades but something about this man before brought out all sorts of emotions and actions he would have once thought had long ago been trained out of him. Apparently not, considering his current reaction. "It's not that," he burst out. "Well, not just that," he conceded at the frankly skeptical look on the other man's face. He took a deep breath and prepared to come clean. "I'm jealous, alright? I've only know you for a few months and you saw how things were with my team and told me how to fix it. You know why you're Immortal and deal with it — and I can't!"

Ianto snorted; if Jack was a lesser man, he might have stormed out of the Hub or thrown a punch. However, he had done enough observation of his companion to know that he didn't mean anything derisive by it. Probably.

"Fuck, Jack… None of us know why we're Immortal, we just know that we are. And we learned to deal with it or we wouldn't last."

"But that's just it! You handle everything so well. You adjusted to what happened to you rather quickly. Owen didn't think you'd be sane after what they did to you." Jack hated to sound like he was whining but suspected he did.

"Jack…" Ianto sighed and dropped onto the desk, facing him, his coat already forgotten on the floor. "I'm old. Older than I should be because of the Rift. And because of that, I've lived through a lot." He shook his head at Jack's questioning look. "I'm sorry. I won't tell you all of my life story. I don't know you well enough, for one. But, what I'm trying to say is that what happened with UNIT… well, it wasn't the first time it's happened to me."

"You've been tortured like that before?" Jack didn't know whether to feel horrified or amazed. He settled for a mixture of the two.

"Yep. It's not easy, believe me, but I knew I could survive what happened to me, just as I knew I would recover."

"Because you have before," Jack nodded. "I can see that."

"The thing is, Jack," Ianto leaned closer, capturing Jack's gaze with his own, "it's not as easy as you think. Sure, I've been tortured before. But it still drags me into a place that I don't want to remain. I don't know what would have happened to me if you hadn't rescued me. If you hadn't confined me to the Hub and refused to allow me out. I might have recovered, but I also could have become really, really dangerous. Mark my words, Jack. I can be very dangerous when I want to."

Jack raised an eyebrow in question. "Are you warning me?"

"Yep." Ianto looked pleased, as if Jack had discovered something unique. He had a difficult time reconciling what he told him with what he had observed. Though he claimed to be dangerous, he just couldn't see it, not of the man who wore sharp and well-fitting suits, who subtly took care of everyone in the Hub, who spent most of his day in the Archives and sorting them out.

"I can't see it," he finally admitted. He discovered that he liked this, being able to speak frankly with someone, to not have to hide such an essential aspect of who he was.

Ianto grinned widely. "That's because I'm that good." He gave a shrug and continued, "one thing I learned in all my years was the importance of camouflage. The easiest way to make sure someone doesn't get unduly interested in me is to make sure there isn't anything about me that draws the eye. Being flashy kind of defeats the purpose of anonymity."

"Are you saying I'm too obvious?" Jack asked, a teasing grin on his lips. He felt a flash of surprise at the behavior of the other man. It seemed… seemed almost as if he was flirting?

"Not much call for wearing an old RAF coat out and about in Cardiff and I think bracers went out of style quite a while ago," Ianto commented with a nod towards the decidedly old-fashioned cut and style of Jack's clothes. "Of course, you're a bit of an establishment here in Cardiff, so most see it as a quirk."

"It reminds me," Jack began, feeling embarrassment at what he was about to reveal, "of a time in my life where everything changed. Of the two people who changed me for the better."

"You don't need to share this with me, you know."

"I know," Jack admitted. "I don't mind, though."

"Want to go out for a pint?"

"Why Mr. Jones, are you asking me out?" Jack gave him a flirtatious look.

"Maybe," Ianto replied, a smirk on his lips and his eyes showing unfathomable emotion. It both excited and scared Jack. It had been so long since someone had pursued him, since he could enter a relationship with someone and not have to hide one of his deepest secrets.

"I'll get my coat," he said, mouth dry as he pushed back from the desk and rose from his chair. A glint of emotion flashed through Ianto's eyes but the other man didn't make a move or say another word. Jack went to pull on his coat, watching as Ianto bent down to retrieve his fallen coat and don it.

"I like the coat," Ianto murmured as he passed Jack by to exit the Hub before him. Jack swallowed, suddenly feeling like he had entered a game in which he had no idea of the rules. Given that he usually played the role of seducer, he found it odd and strangely thrilling to have the roles reversed.

He wondered just what Ianto would do to him. As he followed the other man out the door, he smiled; for the first time in a long time, he focused on something other than waiting for the Doctor.

Maybe Ianto was right, maybe he should learn to live in the now and worry about the future are it came.

***

Suzie grabbed Owen and a surprised Toshiko and dragged them out for lunch. Jack barely noticed, merely raising a hand in acknowledgment when she informed him they were going to lunch. Jones remained in the Archives, but since she wanted to discuss both him and Jack's changed behavior, she didn't bother inviting him.

"What's going on, Suzie," Owen grumbled. She suspected he was disappointed she hadn't arranged from them to be alone. She didn't have the time or patience to soothe his bruised male ego though so pretended to ignore his foul mood.

"I wanted to ask you about Jack and the new guy," she said; her companions perked up in interest and she smiled smugly in response. "Figured that would catch your attention."

"Ianto is very nice," Tosh pointed out in that soft way she had. Suzie nodded impatiently.

"I'm certain he is. He probably rescues kitten and reads to orphans in his spare time." Suzie couldn't help the sarcastic words that poured out of her mouth. "Whether he's nice or not isn't the point."

"Then what is?" Owen asked, impatience radiating from him.

"Come on! You can't tell me you haven't noticed how much Jack's changed since we rescued Jones from UNIT. Aren't you the least bit worried?" Suzie asked.

With a slow shake of her head, Tosh answered, "but is it really a bad thing? Yes, Jack's changed but for the better."

"Hate to agree, but Tosh is right," Owen said. "We're going to finally work decent hours now that he's finally hiring more people. Be a bit nice not to be so drained at the end of the day. You can't tell me you're upset about that."

"It's not that," Suzie ground out. "I'm just worried, okay? We don't know much about this Jones fellow and while all the changes Jack's made so far have been good, we don't know that will always be the case."

"And what are we supposed to do?" Owen asked. "Not like Jack'll listen to us."

"Actually…" Tosh interjected, "I'm not sure about that." She flushed as the other two stared at her. "Just… haven't you noticed? Jack's been taking an actual interest in our lives lately. I know he's been asking for my opinion on a lot of the programming I've been doing and I've seen you Owen, be pulled into his office to talk about your Weevil project. And well… with you Suzie, he had me undertake a comprehensive search to see if I could find out more about that gauntlet that you were working on." She shrunk back a little at the intense look Suzie favored her but it didn't stop her from continuing, something that Suzie respected even though the Tosh of a month ago would never have done this. "You should have seen his face — it was horrific! He looked so angry and upset when he realized just what the gauntlet did to its users."

Suzie grimaced; she didn't like thinking about the gauntlet and how _obsessed_ she had become with uncovering its secrets. While she had initially hated Jack for taking it from her, she now realized he had been right to do so. "So, what? You think Jones is forcing Jack to care for us?"

She shrugged in response. "Maybe. Or maybe he said something to Jack that made him change his behavior."

"Owen?" Suzie asked, wanting to know what her sometimes lover thought.

"Ah… I don't know. Jack's changed but Tosh is right. He's changed for the better." He held up a hand to pause Suzie's tirade. "I'm not saying I trust Jones. You're right — we don't know much about him and he's not exactly forthcoming. But he's not harmed us yet and I'm real happy Jack's hiring more people."

"We can watch Ianto," Tosh offered. "If he starts acting suspiciously, we can always tell Jack."

Looking at her two colleagues, Suzie knew she didn't have a chance in hell of convincing them that Jones was dangerous. It should bother her more than it did and only her natural paranoia kept her from believing in him. She had to admit — to herself at least — that Jack had become a better boss since Jones had moved out of the Hub. Somewhat reluctantly, she had to admit that Jones had probably saved her life by alerting Jack to the possibility of the danger the gauntlet represented. The power it had held over her… it scared her to think about it.

As much as she didn't want to admit it, she knew — just knew — that Jack would never have bothered to order a deeper investigation into the origins of the gauntlet if Jones hadn't bothered him about it. She'd probably be dead.

"I suppose you're right," she finally said and smiled weakly as her companions smiled widely.

"Think they're shagging yet?" Owen asked, irreverent as ever. Suzie laughed and thought that he had only asked to see Tosh blush and act flustered over the thought. On the other hand, he had also moved their conversation from the serious into proper gossip. A successful lunchtime agenda, then.

***

"Suzie, I need to speak with you," Jack called out as his second-in-command entered the Hub with Owen and Tosh, all three laughing.

Nodding, she scurried up to the conference room and joined him. He hoped his nerves didn't show; he had put off this conversation for long enough and couldn't waste the time anymore.

"What is it, Jack?" Suzie asked. She sounded nervous, which made him wonder just what the three had done during lunch that would make her wary. He made a mental reminder to check up on them later if they continued to act that way.

"I… you know I've more or less decided on who I want to hire, right?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, still obviously uncertain why he had wanted to talk with her.

"Right, well. I've hired enough new staff that we can have two shifts, one of the day and one for the night."

"Yes, Owen's looking forward to it," she commented. Jack wondered if the couple had decided on a formalized relationship or if they remained casual. He'd have to see what Ianto thought — he still saw so much more than him, though he'd gotten better in the last couple of weeks.

He nodded and continued, "you're my second-in-command, Suzie. I respect you and your abilities. So… what do you want?"

She looked at him with complete confusion and a trace of embarrassed pride. "I don't understand," she finally confessed.

"What do you want? I can keep you on the same shift as me… or you can have charge of the second shift. They'll be yours — yours to command, yours to protect."

Her eyes widened with complete surprise. "But… what…?"

"I'm leaving the decision up to you. You have the right of it."

"You'd trust me with that?" she whispered.

"Of course! You're my second, the first person I hired for my Torchwood. I trust you, Suzie. I believe you can do this but I won't make you — not if you don't want it," he assured her. He gave her one of his genuine smiles.

"And if I say no?" she asked.

He gave a careless shrug. "I'll figure it out." He'd probably end up training one of the new staff to take the position but that could be dealt with later if she decided against taking it herself. "You'd still be my second, regardless of whether you opt to take charge of the second shift or not." He wouldn't demote her, couldn't do that to her.

"Wow," she said, clasping shaky hand together. "I… I didn't expect this, Jack. You said you were hiring more people but I didn't even think who would take charge of them."

"We're not like London was and you know why. London didn't have a Rift, didn't need to have personnel working twenty four-seven like we do. We've managed since I took over at the Millennium, but we can do better — should do better. You know as well as I that things have slipped through our fingers because we can't be everywhere at once."

Suzie nodded; she had seen the reports and had his frustration when they couldn't be at two or even three places at once. "I… I think I would like that," she said, giving him a small smile.

"Great!" Jack exclaimed, grinning widely. "We'll go through the files and help to pick out your team." He was relieved, relieved that she had accepted. He thought she would thrive at having her own team. And, despite the recent incident with the gauntlet, he trusted her. Suzie would do him proud.

***

"Hello, Tamara," Ianto greeted.

"Ianto!" Lise squealed. "Oh! I'm so glad I was able to reach you. How are you?"

Ianto chuckled, "quite well, actually. And you? How do you like America?"

"It's brilliant," she enthused. "That project for which Daniel works hired me on."

"Good to hear. He's back, then?"

"Yep, he said he'd give you a ring sometime this weekend," she informed him.

"Good to know. I'll make sure to answer then," he teased.

"Ha, ha," Lise groused. "Can you come and visit?"

"Maybe in few months. Have you had any trouble?" He didn't quite want to leave Cardiff yet, not even for a short holiday. Certainly not until the rest of the new hires had settled. Maybe by then he could convince Jack to join him? Though… he was getting a bit ahead of himself.

"Nope, nothing. Someone came on through but wasn't looking for any trouble so…" she answered. He was relieved to hear that she hadn't had to take a head in the months since she had moved there.

"I'm happy to hear that," he told her. "Now, what can you tell me about your new job?" And for the next forty minutes, Lise happily regaled him with updates on her life. After they rung off, Ianto smiled, content that his last student had found a place for herself in this world and that he didn't have to worry about her. Inevitably, his mind turned to his latest student — though to call Jack his student was a bit of an exaggeration.

He found Jack exasperating; they had forged a friendship of sorts, one in which Ianto tried to gently guide him on how to survive as an Immortal. But it went beyond that as Jack had taken to speaking to him about Torchwood and its future, about his decision to find the Doctor to get his answers, about what he hoped for his people. He liked that Jack seemed to trust him enough to confide in him but he also wanted more.

Captain Jack Harkness was undeniably attractive. The man exuded sex appeal — and knew it. For all that, he didn't seem interested in pursuing anything with Ianto. Oh, he flirted with him but never went beyond that. And Ianto had made it pretty clear that he wouldn't be adverse to entering a sexual relationship with the handsome man.

Ianto shrugged to himself as he looked out into the Cardiff night. He had plenty of time and if the Captain continued to prove stubborn, well…

He could be _very_ patient though… and given their Immortal natures, he assumed that one day, if not now, then in the future, he would wear him down.

***

It might surprise some to learn of it, but Jack had long ago cultivated patience. Why else would he wait so long for the Doctor to answer his questions? He knew Ianto wouldn't protest if he actually accepted the subtle invitations for sex the other man made to him. A part of him had resisted because he didn't want to create a work entanglement, but really that was merely an excuse — and a poor one at that since working together hadn't stopped him in the past. Another part of him still didn't know how far to trust the other man. Yes, he continued to offer advice on how to live his life as an Immortal and how to run his branch of Torchwood or bring to his attention anything that he hadn't noticed about his agents, but the man himself had warned Jack he could be dangerous. Entering into a relationship with him — no matter how casual — meant taking a risk and he didn't know if he wanted to go that far.

Except all of those reasons were simple excuses.

Jack found Ianto very attractive. He had also seen how he had integrated himself into Torchwood, helping his team with their work and offering advice when asked for it. Even though he was the impetus behind the hiring spree on which Jack had gone, he didn't ask to be involved and only offered his opinion when asked.

Beyond that, the other man truly understood what it meat to live outside of one's time. Ianto had lived a mostly linear existence; he had seen the breadth of history, had lived through so much that what had once been common no longer was. And he had survived and thrived. Jack appreciated that about him.

He knew Ianto believed he wasn't interested in pursuing a sexual relationship with him — and the other man was right… but not for long. Jack had wanted to wait until he had assembled the new hires and now that he did? Well… let's just say that the pursuer had suddenly become the pursued.

Jack smirked. He looked forward to the hunt.

***

It took about a month for Jack to feel comfortable with the new hires. Suzie had picked out her team and they seemed to work well together. She hadn't complained at least. Owen liked lording it over the two medics Jack had hired, though he wasn't so happy about the different shifts he and Suzie now worked. Tosh had taken to the other tech people and, with Suzie, had trained them on what they needed to know, from navigating the computer system to identifying alien tech. Ianto had finished introducing the Archives to his underlings and even trusted them to retrieve and shelve objects without hurting themselves.

Even the police liaison Jack had hired had worked out, much to everyone's surprise. Suzie had suggested the need for better relationship with the locals. Jack had to admit that having Gwen Cooper deal with the Cardiff Police had certainly made his life easier so he didn't complain too much when she sometimes tried to lecture them on not focusing on the aliens so much and consider the human element.

For the first time since the Millennium, Torchwood-Three had a full contingent of agents that worked around the clock. It surprised Jack how proud he felt; he had always assumed that his smaller Torchwood, full of people he had personally chosen as he crossed paths with them, was the best way to honor the Doctor's legacy. He hadn't wanted a large Torchwood, not trusting that it wouldn't devolve into the monstrosity that Torchwood-One had become. However, even in the month since the new agents had begun to work for Three, he had seen how much stronger his Torchwood had become. He had confidence that they wouldn't allow what happened to One to happen here.

Satisfied at the capability of his new agents, Jack now turned his attention to his Head Archivist. He had invited the other man to dinner tonight; Ianto had accepted and Jack looked forward to furthering his relationship with him. He expected it to be well worth the wait — after all, this was the man who had lived in some of the most decadent cultures in Earth history. Jack couldn't wait to sample his talents.

***

Panting and with sweat dripping, Ianto grinned up at Jack. "You're not all talk, then."

Jack barked out a laugh and leaned down to nip at his neck. "Neither are you." He settled down to kiss the other man, exploring his mouth and tasting him. His fifty-first century taste buds could discern so many different flavors and he loved it all. Ianto's arms tightened around him and he could feel renewed interest, not that he desired to complain. Still, he wanted this time to go slowly, so that he could learn Ianto's body and he could learn his. Of course, that would take many, many nights, but Jack didn't care. He had them and he was going to hold onto this as long as he could.

Ianto didn't seem to mind.

He didn't care what the future brought; right now, right here, Jack was content with what he had.

_/fin_


End file.
